Cameroon Gas Victims Get Foreign Aid; Scientists Searching for Cause of Disaster

The international relief effort to aid victims of a toxic gas disaster in northwest Cameroon shifted into high gear here Wednesday as scientists began the painstaking process of trying to determine exactly what happened and what to do about it.

Cameroon President Paul Biya announced formation of a high-level government crisis committee to manage the flow of international aid.

“Our first priority is to set priorities,” said the committee chairman, Minister of Territorial Administration Jean-Marcel Mengueme, in an interview.

However, both Mengueme and senior Western diplomatic sources said reports that up to 30,000 Cameroonians were turned into refugees by the disaster were wildly exaggerated.

Cameroonian officials spoke about 2,000 to 3,000 people “displaced,” including up to 300 being treated in hospitals and unknown hundreds more who have left their homes in the affected area but who are staying with relatives.

Enough Aid Soon

“As I understand the situation, I think within the next few days they will have adequate aid,” said a senior Western diplomat involved in the relief effort.

Officials were admittedly slow to grasp the extent of the catastrophe after poisonous gas erupted from the bottom of a remote volcanic lake last Thursday night. The eruption at Lake Nios enveloped neighboring villages in a cloud of toxic fumes that killed an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 people.

There was no official word of the disaster until almost two days later because of the remoteness of the area, the poor roads and the absence of telephones, and initial reports spoke of only about 40 dead. It was not until Sunday that the government declared the affected area around Lake Nios a disaster area. Thus, the effort to organize aid for the stricken villages was slower than might otherwise have been the case.

“It’s because this government had never faced a problem on this scale before,” said one diplomatic source who requested anonymity.

37 Died in 1984 Eruption

This official noted that a similar eruption two years earlier, at Lake Monoun, about 60 miles southeast of the area stricken last week, had claimed only 37 lives. Given that experience, the authorities were slow to grasp “the idea that something on this scale could happen,” he explained.

Since Sunday, however, the government, relying mostly on the army, has managed to clear most of the six-square-mile area of corpses and to organize a flow of aid to those hurt or displaced by the disaster. “In reaction time in Africa, that’s pretty quick,” the diplomatic source said.

However, the army is clearly hampered by a shortage of aircraft (it reportedly has only six helicopters) and heavy earth-moving equipment needed to bury hundreds of dead cattle whose bloated carcasses are still scattered over the grassy hillsides of the stricken area.

What began as a trickle of international aid, meanwhile, was flowing strong by Wednesday.

France put a transport plane at the disposal of the thinly stretched Cameroonian military, and the country’s top volcanologist was due here today.

Canada donated $40,000 for supplies to the local Red Cross League.

Plane Brings Supplies

A C-130 transport plane loaded with 40 tons of blankets, mattresses, and medical supplies from the European Communities was expected today. And separate planeloads of supplies from West Germany and Britain were due by the weekend.

A truck carrying $35,000 worth of canned goods, milk, bottled water, and other necessities, purchased locally with a U.S. government donation, was on its way to the stricken area Wednesday night.

Also on Wednesday, the first of a team of about 10 American scientists arrived, with the rest due in later in the week. The team includes pathologists who hope to examine bodies of some of the victims of the gas cloud and physical scientists specializing in geology, limnology (the study of lakes) and volcanology.

One team member, Joseph Devine of Brown University, was also among American scientists who studied the 1984 gas incident at Lake Monoun.

In Washington, the Agency for International Development announced that it will airlift 15 tons of emergency supplies, including 250 family-sized tents and gas detectors, to Cameroon by the end of the week. State Department spokesman Charles Redman said the United States has initially contributed $250,000 to Cameroon and that figure is expected to rise.

Scientists Make Studies

Cameroonian scientists are also on the scene. Bienvenu Fouda, acting secretary general and technical adviser to the bureau of mines, said in an interview that he sent a four-man team to the area on Tuesday to take water samples and carry out other tests.

Foreign scientists, too, hope that pathological tests on the victims and analyses of chemical traces in water and vegetation in the area will reveal exactly what gases made up the toxic cloud. That would indicate whether the tragedy stemmed from a true volcanic eruption or some other phenomenon, for example.

It is expected to be several days or perhaps weeks before even preliminary results are available from the international and Cameroonian scientific studies.

Fouda refused to speculate about whether the latest incident stemmed from the same technical causes as the 1984 eruption.

A study of the Lake Monoun incident, completed in March, 1985, concluded that there was a very high carbon dioxide content in the lake afterward, suggesting that the incident was caused by volcanic activity and that the victims were asphyxiated.

A source here who has read the report quoted it as describing a 15-foot-high tidal wave caused by the gas eruption. The resulting gas cloud never rose more than nine feet above the ground, it added.