Potentially lethal methane at the bottom of Lake Kivu is being harnessed to solve Rwanda’s energy poverty, but the project needed complex funding agreements to get off the ground
In 1984 37 people died on the road leading past Lake Monoun in western Cameroon. Survivors reported seeing a foul-smelling cloud of white gas, which crept low along the floor. Victims’ bodies were covered in blisters. Was someone testing chemical weapons? The US government immediately dispatched a team of scientists to find out.
Haraldur Sigurdsson from University of Rhode Island ruled out biological warfare in favour of suffocation. Following interviews with survivors, he reached the conclusion that the deadly gas cloud had emanated from the lake. Tests on the water showed that it was almost saturated with gas: Sigurdsson and his colleagues concluded that the deaths were a result of a limnic eruption, also known as lake overturn or lake explosion.
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