Episode 54: The Lake Nyos disaster

Disaster Area

Truecrime, Explosions, Aviationaccidents, Floods, Fires, Earthquakes, History, Shipwrecks, Volcanoes, Disaster, Hurricanes, Planecrashes, Disasters, Tornadoes, Massshootings, Society & Culture

4.2 • 839 Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2017

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You don't expect a lake to just explode. But in 1986, Lake Nyos in Cameroon did exactly that on a hot August night, sending a jet of water skyward. The water wasn't the problem, however. The real problem was a mysterious something which killed over 1700 people and thousands of head of livestock.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everybody. This is Jennifer Matarise, and before I get started today, I'd just like to take care of the usual housekeeping.
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0:51.2	And as always, the sources for each new episode can be found at disaster area podcast.
0:56.1	Dot WordPress.com. And also, I do want to say a preemptive apology just in case I mispronounce
1:03.1	any of the names in this particular episode. With that mind, thank you very much for listening,
1:08.7	and welcome to Disaster Area.
1:17.7	Music mind. Thank you very much for listening and welcome to disaster area. Episode 54. The Lake Neos disaster. August 21, 1986. 1,746 deceased, hundreds injured. Nature is weird. Sometimes it does things we don't
1:34.1	expect it to do. About 30 years ago, a lake in Africa did something you might not think it would.
1:40.1	It blew up. But the explosion wasn't the problem. It was the deadly secret hidden within its
1:45.6	depths, which caused massive amounts of destruction, not to places or things, but to every living
1:52.2	being in its path. Now, if you look on a map of Africa, Cameroon is a country of about
1:58.0	23.5 million people located on the west coast of Africa where the
2:03.0	waist cinches in. You know, you've heard me describe where African countries are in a map
2:08.1	before, just in case you have a hard time finding them. And that is where it is. It's on the left
2:14.4	hand side, right where the country sort of, the continent, excuse me, narrows down.
2:22.0	Now, Cameroon is about the size of California, and Lake Neos is in the northwest corner of the country,
2:28.2	really close to the border with Nigeria. In photos, Lake Neos was a picturesque mountain lake within the Oku volcanic field,
	...

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