2004/07/27 by M. Halbwachs, Jean‐Christophe Sabroux, Jacques Grangeon +9 · 1 voice
Environmental Science · #Flood Risk Assessment and Management
paper · doi:10.1029/2004eo300001
openalex publication_date 2004/07/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
A unique humanitarian, scientific, and technical experiment is currently taking place in a forgotten mountainous region of West Africa. The experiment is on the verge of reaching its operational stage, which consists of the eradication of a “new” natural hazard; one that is potentially devastating, but which has been known for only 20 years. The Lake Nyos catastrophe, which claimed 1800 victims in August 1986, was not unprecedented. Indeed, 2 years previously a lethal gas burst, originating from nearby Lake Monoun in the same remote area of Cameroon, killed 37 people—an odd and tragic episode that went almost unnoticed. One had never before heard of Mother Nature asphyxiating human beings and most higher animals on such a scale in a single and brief non‐volcanic event.