Relief reaches Goma volcano victims

Emergency crews have bulldozed a route through hardening lava in the stricken town of Goma, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, allowing trucks to start deliveries of emergency supplies to the thousands of returning residents who fled Thursday's volcanic activity, Reuters reported.

Food and aid distributions had been delayed by logistical problems, coupled with fears that distributions in Goma could lead people into believing that the international community had deemed it safe to return to the town, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported.

"The resulting dilemma: how to effectively convey such concern yet still assist the returned population, remained unresolved," the organisation added.

"There was widespread frustration that, despite the aid agencies’ presence, substantial help had yet to reach Goma," Reuters reported.

Most of the thousands of people who had fled Goma had now returned, OCHA reported on Wednesday. This spontaneous return is posing a significant challenge to aid agencies trying to meet the needs of victims. Aid agencies had originally planned to set up camps in the northwestern Rwandan town of Gisenyi, where an estimated 250,000 people had fled, before these plans were ruined by the mass return of Goma's residents. Only 15,000 people had remained in the two Gisenyi displacement camps established in Nkamira and Mudende, OCHA reported.

However, an estimated 20,000 people have fled to Sake, 30 km west of Goma, having found their homes in Goma destroyed. Aid agencies are already in Sake feeding children displaced by the three-and-a-half-year civil war in the Congo.

"Getting the aid through to the needy is a logistical nightmare," the BBC reported. It added that the lava divided Sake in two, making it impossible for aid agencies to reach the western side of the town by road.

No new lava flows were reported from the volcano on Wednesday, although residual lava was still seeping slowly into Lake Kivu, OCHA said. Goma sits on the northern edge of the lake. OCHA added that the European Commission’s Humanitarian Office had confirmed that the lake had shown no sign of containing chemicals capable of threatening the town's water supply.

A Belgian vulcanologist, Jacques Durieux, and his Congolese colleague, Wafula Mafungu, who had warned the international community of the impending volcanic disaster, now say they expect no further activity, according to OCHA. However, the scientists said that in future there must be a more detailed technical analysis and monitoring of Mt. Nyiragongo, source of the current disaster.

Durieux and Mafungu also confirmed that gas emissions from the volcano and fissures in the earth did not pose significant health risks, as had been widely feared. They had also said that significant explosions of gas leaking from pockets at the bottom of Lake Kivu were highly unlikely, if not impossible, OCHA reported on Wednesday. However, earthquakes continued in the region on Wednesday, destroying houses in Goma and killing several people.