True Stories #168 - The Killer Lake

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Episode Transcript

(00:01):
I'm Seth Andrews, and what you'reabout to hear is a true story.
Today we chronicle a dark and tragicday in recent human history, and we
build from that tragedy a necessary answerto the question how could this happen?

(00:28):
Lake NEOs is located in Cameroon.This is in west central Africa. One
of the residents of NEOs was afarmer named Ephraim Chay. This was August
twenty first, nineteen eighty six,and he was sitting with his family in
his mud brick house about nine o'clockat night, and he heard the sound

(00:50):
of rumbling, maybe thunder, hethought to himself, and he said to
his kids, it sounds like rainmight be on the way. But Ephraim
wasn't feeling well, and so hewent to bed. Other people around the
village had heard that sound. Somepeople said it sounded like an earthquake.
Other people reported the shouting of voices. Still others talked about an angry wind.

(01:17):
And yes, within moment of thatsound, there was a wind that
came through the fields and down theroads and between and into the houses of
NEOs, and in that moment,people everywhere collapsed. Ephraim woke up the
following morning. He noticed that thelake, which was usually blue, was

(01:40):
not this morning. It was adull red color, and the shoreline had
changed, and there was a nearbywaterfall outlet that was dried up. And
then he noticed something else. Henoticed the absolute silence. Where were the
songbirds? Where was the sound ofinsects and other life all around the lake.

(02:02):
Ephraim got scared, and he continuedto walk around the lake until finally
he heard the sound of screaming.The screams were coming from a mother of
four. She had been the onlyone in her family to wake up that
morning, and lying all around her, still and lifeless, were the children.

(02:24):
Thirty one other members of her family, and all of their four hundred
cattle were dead in the field.All had died during the night. There
was one observer at the scene.He noticed there weren't even any flies on
the bodies of the dead, becausethe flies had also not survived. Ephraim

(02:46):
Jay continued to make horrifying discoveries throughoutthat morning and into the day in that
village of Lower NEOs. Everywhere helooked mothers and fathers and children and elders
and animals. It seemed that mostof the town had become populated with the
lifeless. Many found at the exactspot where they had been standing or sitting

(03:12):
or lying around nine pm the nightbefore. It was as if the biblical
Angel of Death had visited this placeand struck down everyone, or almost everyone.
There were some people a few peoplewho were unconscious. They lay motionless
for a whole day before their eyesfinally open, and many regained consciousness to

(03:38):
be told that their whole family hadnot survived. A few people, in
fits of grief, even ended theirown lives in the following days. What
in the world had happened to thisvillage? Investigators would soon see the meeting
of science and mythology, and theytraced the killer back to Lake NEOs itself.

(04:02):
Now in Cameroon mythologies, lakes wereoften said to be sinister spirit worlds,
dangerous places, had some deadly eventthat happened hundreds, maybe thousands of
years ago, given birth to fearsand superstitions about the lake itself. I

(04:23):
will leave that one to the folkloristsand the anthropologists. But for a long
long time, the people of NEOshad built their homes on the upper slopes
in the upper regions, until finally, in recent decades we saw more and
more people filtered down to lake level. It's believed that some kind of geological

(04:47):
event had happened on that terrible nightin August of nineteen eighty six, and
that movement of the Earth had releaseda killer, deadly carbon dioxides COO two
that lay buried in the deepest watersof the lake. Now COO two bills
up in lakes that exist near volcanicactivity. This is not really a problem

(05:12):
if the waters move, if there'sturbulence and waves, but on lakes that
are very still, the CO twogas dissolves into the water and then it
compresses and bills like a time bomb. Imagine Lake NEOs holding beneath its surface
a massive amount of supersaturated water loadedwith toxic CO two, and then a

(05:39):
smaller volcanic eruption or a landslide orsome other event affects the lake, moves
the waters, causes turbulence, thelake pressure changes, and that poison is
set free. A three hundred thirtyfoot column of water and foam had burst
through the surface, causing an atwo foot wave that smashed shores and flattened

(06:03):
trees. The heavy gases in thosedeep waters had effer vest and they burst
to the surface, becoming airborne,an airborne lake of C O two gas,
three quarter mile wide, drifting low, hugging the land, moving through
the fields and into the village.One reporter would say the whole scene looked

(06:30):
like the aftermath of a neutron bomb. And it might as well have been
a bomb, because that night onethousand, eight hundred people died at Lake
NEOs, and many others would strugglewith various health problems in the years after.
And beyond all of that, therewas the fear that this would happen

(06:51):
again. Now, finally, inthis story, I've got some good news.
In nineteen ninety nine, after abunch of bureaucratic shuffling and arguing,
the United States Office of Foreign DisasterAssistance donated almost half a million dollars to
help solve the problem, And intwo thousand and one, in the middle

(07:15):
of the lake, authorities installed alarge six inch pipe and that pipe goes
way down seven hundred feet to thedeepest layers of the lake. Ten years
after that, two additional pipes wereinstalled. These vents slowly decompressing lake NEOs

(07:35):
just a little bit at a time, reducing the danger, releasing the pressure
of the deadly gas like one mightrelease an abscess with a syringe. This
effort to counter Mother Nature will probablynever end. The volcanic Earth is constantly

(07:55):
recharging CO two into the water,but at this moment, it seems that
the villagers are safe, and scientistshave been looking closely at other similar lakes
around the world that hide their owngeological time bombs. In fact, one
lake Lake Kivu and the Democratic Republicof the Congo. It sits under one

(08:22):
of the world's most active volcanoes.It is constantly charging with deadly methane gas
and scientists say it could explode withina hundred years. And to put that
into perspective, Lake Kivu is biggerthan Lake NEOs spy two thousand times and

(08:50):
that is a true story. TrueStories podcast dot Com