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Nyirangongo volcano in new phase of activity
The question I keep getting when I tell people that
I jumped into Nyiragongo, an active volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo is: "What did you do to the mountain!?"
It's an odd question, but it makes sense when you realize that
Nyiragongo is suddenly undergoing a new, more active phase. And it's got the volcanologists at the Goma Observatory worried.
New activity in the crater over the last few weeks has spurred the scientists into action as a new vent has opened up on the ledge just above the lava lake. This was preceded by a series of earthquakes that knocked large rocks off the crater walls that I had only recently scaled.
The ledge that the vent opened on is the one that I didn't make it down to, but the rest of the team did. However, I did stand directly above the area in which it opened, but, at the time, I took no notice of the nondescript ground far below me. I had zero inkling that less then 10 days after I left, magma would boil out of a newly formed crack in the earth.
The vent has formed on the side of the caldera closest to the city of Goma at the base of the mountain. In addition, new fumoroles (gas and steam vents) have opened up on the flank of the volcano close to where lava erupted in the 2002 eruption. In that eruption, 147 people lost their lives and over a third of Goma was destroyed.
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