By Spy Uganda Correspondent
DRC: Food and water supplies running low as hundreds of thousands of people flee Goma after warning that Mount Nyiragongo volcano may erupt again.
People in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) woke to more powerful tremors on Saturday morning as fleeing families seeking shelter from a feared second volcanic eruption struggled to find enough food and water.
Dozens of people died when Mount Nyiragongo volcano, one of the world’s most active, roared back into life a week ago, sending rivers of lava spreading towards the nearby city of Goma that destroyed thousands of homes along the way.
The lava stopped just short of the city limits but thousands of more people fled on Thursday when the government warned that the volcano could erupt again at any time.
Most people have headed to the town of Sake or the Rwandan border in the northeast while others have fled by boat across Lake Kivu. Nearly 10,000 people are taking refuge in Bukavu on the lake’s southern bank, according to Governor Theo Ngwabidje, many of them in host families.
In Sake, some 20 kilometers (13 miles) northwest of Goma people slept wherever they could on the side of the road and inside classrooms and churches.
One of the victims, Kabuo Asifiwe Muliwavyo said she and her seven children had not eaten since arriving on Thursday.
“They told us that there will be a second eruption and that there will be a big gas explosion, but since we moved, there is nothing here we are starving.”
Evacuee Eugene Kubugoo told the press that the water was giving children diarrhea adding that they don’t have anything to eat or any place to sleep.
Late on Friday, Rwandan President Paul Kagame appealed for “urgent global support” to manage the crisis while the United Nations’ children’s fund (UNICEF) said some 400,000 people needed support or protection.
“With an increased risk of a cholera outbreak, we are appealing for urgent international assistance to avert what could be a catastrophe for children,” Edouard Beigbeder, UNICEF’s representative in the DRC said.
The evacuation order was issued about 1:am local time on Thursday after radar images showed molten rock flowing under Goma.
The movement of magma caused cracks in the ground and hundreds of earthquakes, which could allow it to burst through to the surface in a fresh eruption, the Goma Volcano Observatory (OVG) said.
Volcanologists say the worst-case scenario is of an eruption under the lake. This could release hundreds of thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) that are currently dissolved in the water’s depths and the gas would rise to the surface of the lake forming an invisible cloud that would linger at ground level and displace oxygen.
But the frequency and intensity of the ground tremors had lessened in the last 24 hours suggesting the risk of a fresh eruption was subsiding, Celestin Kasareka Mahinda of the OVG said on Friday.
“I don’t think we will have a second eruption, the problem is the risk of fractures but the risk is small around 20 percent,” he told journalists.
Meanwhile, Congolese authorities reopened the main road which was split in two by lava, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Thursday.
On Friday, almost all of the shops and banks in central Goma were closed and just a handful of people and some motorcycle taxis were on the usually bustling streets.
In the poorer districts in the north of the city, a handful of stores were open and there were more people, including children who gambolled near a water truck.
Nearly 3,500 meters (11,500 feet) high, Nyiragongo straddles the East African Rift tectonic divide. Its last major eruption, in 2002, claimed about 100 lives and the deadliest eruption on record killed more than 600 people in 1977.
