Goma, DRC

Goma, DRC - darkometer rating : 6 - A city in Eastern Congo (DRC) on Lake Kivu near the border with Rwanda . Once a kind of lake-side resort for holidaymakers, the place has suffered so badly in the conflicts of the 1990s and up to the present day, that most of the tourist infrastructure is no more. As the Rwandan genocide was being ended by the rebel forces of the RPF a huge refugee crisis followed, as Hutus fled Rwanda in their hundreds of thousands and poured into Eastern Congo. The refugee camps around Goma were particularly notorious, both for the humanitarian crisis taking place there (including a deadly cholera epidemic) as well as for the fact that the genocidaires of the Interahamwe militia, who had fled with the civilians to these camps, misused the camps as their new bases from which to continue their terror. The reason why Goma appears on these pages is, however, a different one. As if all the human-made tragedy hadn't been enough, the town partly fell victim to its nearby volcano too: In 2002 Mt Nyiragongo erupted, draining its lava lake, which then shot a 200-1000 m wide flood wave of highly fluid, super-fast, and red-hot lava down the slopes and right through Goma. Between 12 and 40 % of the houses were destroyed (the figures available vary quite a bit) and dozens of inhabitants were killed. The airport was also affected – as a lava flow cut off the lower two thirds of the runway from the terminal. The lava flow even reached the lake shore, raising fears that this might trigger a limnic eruption of the dissolved pressurized carbon dioxide and methane in the lake's depths, which could have caused millions of deaths. This did not happen, fortunately, but it remains a constant theoretical threat (see under Rwanda for more info on Lake Kivu). Goma is right on the border with Rwanda – with the Rwandan city of Gisenyi on the other side directly adjacent.