Doctors Marvel How Some Survived Gas Cloud

Francis Gheh and his young son stumbled down out of the high, green hills and back into their village this week in search of a doctor.

They had fled up the hillside more than a week ago after gulping some of the evil gases that burst out of nearby Lake Nios and killed as many as 2,000 people in this valley.

When they returned, on a hot and windless Sunday, they found a few Cameroonian soldiers burying the carcass of a cow.

Father and son timidly approached Adjutant Joseph Bawe Ndi, the officer in charge.

“Please,” Gheh began, “we need doctor to see.”

His lungs hurt, he said. His 9-year-old son rolled up a pants leg to show several bloody sores thick with flies.

“He fell when the gas came,” Gheh said.

Emerging From Bush

Survivors of the Aug. 21 catastrophe are still emerging from the bush, one and two at a time, in this remote region of west-central Africa.

They are a continual source of amazement to doctors and hospitals in Wum and Nkambe, where about 500 people are being treated for injuries that are relatively minor, considering the ferocity of the gases and the death toll.

In a maternity clinic in Souboum, a 4-day-old baby survived--and everyone else in the clinic, including the boy’s mother sleeping in the same bed, died.

“You would think the baby would be more fragile than the mother,” said Dr. Lazare Kaptue, Cameroon’s director of public health.

‘Can’t Explain This One’

He stroked the baby’s head, smiled and said, “We can’t explain this one.”

Esther Ngong, 19, fainted and awoke the next day to the sound of her year-old niece’s crying. The two were the only survivors in a family of 50.

“I think it was just God’s way,” she said, explaining her survival.

The gas cloud that rose from Lake Nios, a crater lake about 400 yards across, killed nearly every breathing thing in Nios, the closest town, with 1,200 residents, and took additional victims at Souboum and two other villages as it moved six miles down the valley.

The gas killed people inside and outside their homes, in their beds, under their beds and under their doorways. Others in the same room survived. A man who lived a few hundred yards from the lake survived; his wife and two children who were staying a mile away perished.

Some Survived, Some Didn’t

No one knows why some died and others survived. Perhaps it was the wind, blowing here and not there, playing favorites. Maybe the babies breathed so lightly when asleep that the carbon dioxide passed them by. But then, many babies also died.

“I really wish we knew why,” said Michael A. Clark, a forensic pathologist with the U.S. medical team studying such questions here. “We just don’t have a good explanation.”

Gheh was in his house that night, about 9 o’clock, when he heard the village alarm, a pulsating yodel from one of the residents. He opened his door to look out and suddenly fainted. When he awoke the next morning, two of his brothers were dead.

He fled to a village on the hillside but returned 10 days later because he could find no doctor in the hills. The soldiers in Souboum put Gheh aboard a helicopter for the hospital in Wum, where 300 of the 500 injured Cameroon villagers are being treated. Their injuries--burns, bruises, cuts and congestion--have not generally been life-threatening, doctors say.

Chief’s Life Spared

The chief of Souboum, Nsah Stephem Ngong, 45, was also spared. Unable to breathe, he awoke that night and tried to go out the door, but fell. He gathered himself up and went into the bush and fell again. When he regained consciousness the next morning, “my heart was beating terrible and blood was coming out of my nose and mouth,” he said, and added: “My head felt as if my brain had been removed. I called for my wife. She said everyone was dead. No ant was moving. All good persons were lying in the streets.”

Among the victims were two of his children.

The chief walked three days to reach the hospital at Wum. He said in an interview that his tribe “was nearly wiped out by this natural act” and that “no devil would have done this.”

Officials have placed the death toll at between 1,500 and 2,000. Some of the victims were taken quickly; others seem to have put up a fight.

Some Go Peacefully

“Some were lying with their hands up as if boxing with an attacker,” said Augustine Nkemta, who helped bury the dead. “Others were just as peaceful as if they were asleep.”

“There were atrocities,” said Dr. Wali Muni, a Cameroon physician shaken by what he saw. “One mother died in labor.”

Other mothers were found on the road, apparently having tried to flee with their babies on their backs.

About 3,000 of the survivors were forced from their homes, and almost all of them have been staying with friends and relatives in nearby villages. The government has not decided yet whether to allow them to move back into their homes or attempt a resettlement.

The four villages invaded by the natural gases remain under guard and troops also have been burying the thousands of cattle that died where they stood on the hillsides.

“It’s difficult to take people out of their home place--even to move them a kilometer away,” said Francis Fai Yengo, senior divisional officer for the province.

Rich Farming Area

This region, at an altitude of about 4,000 feet, is one of the richest farming areas in the world, producing abundant crops of rice, coffee and cassava and well-fed cattle.

International assistance, from blankets to food to tents, has arrived by the planeload in recent days, and the Red Cross says the stricken area no longer needs shipments of relief supplies.

People around the world rushed to provide assistance for Cameroon, but after the dead were buried, the injured in hospitals and most of the homeless absorbed temporarily in other villages, it became apparent that there was not much else anyone could do.

“In some cases you go to save lives,” said Columbanus Morfaw, a U.N. official who visited the area over the weekend.

“But here the disaster is all over. It is too late.”