Nearly 400,000 people have now evacuated Goma, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since Thursday 28 May. A new eruption of the Nyiragongo volcano is always to be feared even if the earthquakes have clearly decreased in intensity. Volcanologist Benoît Smets gives an overview of the situation.
RFI: Since Friday morning, the tremor has decreased significantly in intensity in Goma. Should this be seen as a sign of lasting improvement?
Benoît smetsar:If we only look at seismicity, we can actually be “biased” by saying to ourselves: the activity calms down. There are still the same number of earthquakes, but their intensity decreases in terms of size. If we just look at it, we actually see that there is a reduction. But if we look at the deformation of the earth, therefore, the earth that moves because of the magma that moves, him, deep. So we do not have the signal that says it stops. In fact, what we have right now may be the calm before the storm. That is why we currently have many reservations about the changes that are taking place at the seismic level. We are in a crucial moment. Maybe tomorrow we have more information about this level. What we can say to be calm is that in 2002 we were in a scenario where we had this seismic activity and when the intensity decreased it was a sign that we were nearing the end of the eruption.
(Special edition) Evacuation of the city of Goma
This Saturday 29 May you go there in Goma. So far, how can you remotely participate in the monitoring of this volcano?
You should know that the Vulcanological Observatory of Goma monitoring network arrives at the observatory in real time, but they also come to Luxembourg in real time. This means that we can assist the observatory in processing data. And we also have a view for earth deformation data and earthquake data. By discussing with the observations from the observatory in the field, we can draw conclusions, a consensus between researchers that makes it possible for us to give something more credible and more precise about what is happening.
According to you, the observatory was able to issue the warning in time, because we are talking about financing and management problems that would affect its operation. What is your opinion on this??
Goma Vulcanological Observatory clearly has core funding problems. Therefore, they are very dependent on international projects to be able to carry out their work. But their techniques and their means of monitoring are very modern, especially thanks to international aid. In fact, what is happening here is that we had a rash that did not warn. So this monitoring capacity and these funding problems have nothing to do with the fact that we could not detect the outbreak. The volcano did not warn at all. There is no signal that can tell us “watch out, something will change”.
► Read also: Outbreak of Nyiragongo: in Rwanda, the reception of displaced people is organized as best they can
.
