Victims of volcano stream back home

Thousands of people who fled their homes in the eastern Congolese town of Goma following a volcanic eruption on Thursday have begun streaming back home, ignoring continued tremors from Mt. Nyiragongo and warnings by UN officials.

"We have to be concerned about people returning to an area that is still at risk," Ross Mountain, Assistant Deputy Relief Coordinator of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told relief workers on Monday in neighbouring Gisenyi, Rwanda. "We shouldn't let our guard down too soon."

He was speaking at a coordination meeting, held daily at a UN office in Gisenyi since lava began bursting from the side of the volcano on Thursday. At this gathering, participants were engaged in a intense debate over whether food distributions could begin in Goma. Pressure to begin distributions is mounting amid reports of growing anger among Goma residents, many of whom returned to find their homes either buried under gradually cooling lava or consumed by fires caused by the red-hot lava.

"The population is growing increasingly frustrated. They want more action and less assessments," another aid worker told the meeting.

Food and non-food relief supplies are readily available from existing stocks. Even though there was unanimous agreement that aid distributions needed to begin immediately, the most vocal advocates of this action conceded that do so would send a message that the humanitarian community had judged the town safe for residents to return.

"What will the international community have to say if we encourage such a return of the population, only to have another eruption engulf the city?" one UN official said.

The majority of Goma's residents have ignored the appeals of the humanitarian community and the Rwandan government to take, at least, temporary refuge in camps being established for them. One relief camp is near Gisenyi and the other in Ruhengeri, in northwestern Rwanda near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"Most of the Congolese would rather risk the threat of another volcanic eruption than be far from their homes in what is perceived to be a hostile country," one aid worker said. "People have bad memories of the refugee camps that were established following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda."

Rwanda is seen by many Congolese as an aggressor nation that used the presence of armed forces on its border to justify an invasion of the DRC.

Aid workers are still waiting anxiously for the results of samples taken from Lake Kivu, from which the lakeside city of some 400,000 residents draws most of its water. Although all of Goma's water intake plants were untouched by the lava, water/sanitation experts are fearful that one stream of lava that flowed into the lake may have introduced chemicals that the filtration plants were not designed to handle. Appearing on the surface to have cooled and hardened into rock, steam from the point at which the lava flow entered the lake indicated that molten lava was still tunnelling under this hardened crust and into the water.

Fears were also voiced about what effect the molten lava and seismic activity could have on large pockets of carbon dioxide and methane gas that lie at the bottom of the lake, possibly leading to giant explosions that could cause tidal waves or massive releases of toxic gas that could kill hundreds, if not thousands of people.

The humanitarian community also expressed frustration at the time taken to bring vulcanologists, chemists, and other specialists to the stricken area to provide risk assessments to guide their relief efforts. One vulcanologist, however, who arrived on Monday and was able to make an aerial inspection of Mt. Nyiragongo was guardedly optimistic.

"Preliminary indications are that these lava flows were a result of tectonic activity - an earthquake - and not a volcanic eruption," one vulcanologist told IRIN, citing fissures that had opened in the Earth, some stretching for several kilometres. "However, it could take months to verify this."

More vulcanologists are due to arrive on Tuesday, with sophisticated equipment necessary to begin such study.

Aid workers also worry about insecurity throughout the region, where Congolese Mayi-Mayi militias, as well as remnants of the Interahamwe and ex-FAR, remain active.

"We have to be very careful where we locate any temporary settlements for residents of Goma who have not yet returned," an UN official said, noting that fighting had taken place recently within 20 km of the city.

"We must consider the possibility that these groups could take advantage of the prevailing confusion to launch an offensive" against the Rwandan-backed Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie-Goma that controls a large swathe of the eastern DRC, the official said.