Tuesday, May 29, 2007

A FOX IN THE HENHOUSE?


Chicken rancher and former boxing champ Roy Jones, Jr., cropped up from behind the fences of his Pensacola, Florida farm last week. He appeared at a press conference at Madison Square Garden in New York City to announce that he’s returning to the ring to face the unperceived Anthony Hanshaw on July 14th in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Jones, who is a longtime breeder of chickens for cockfights, claims he wants to strut his stuff again and he’s cocksure that a barnyard throw down against Hanshaw will help him do just that.

Hanshaw, an unascertained 29 year-old from Ohio with a pro record of 21-0-1 (14) KO’s could have a good chance to upset Jones if he fights using youth and confidence. Hanshaw is a former U.S. amateur standout who logged more than 300 wins and turned pro in 2000 after failing to make the Olympic team when he lost to eventual bronze medal winner Jermain Taylor in the trials.

As a pro Hanshaw has had a hot and cold career. After winning his first 18 fights he suffered through a two-year stretch of inactivity beginning in 2004 due to an injury to his left shoulder that required surgery and rehabilitation. Hanshaw was also still dealing with a family tragedy that resulted in the unfortunate death of his father, Henry Hanshaw, in an electrical accident. He is perhaps best known for earlier this year making it to the finals of Showtime’s SHOBOX super middleweight tournament in which he eventually ended up fighting to a draw against Frenchman Jean Paul Mendy.

For Hanshaw, the timing could be right to upset a legend as Jones has fallen far from the form he showed while reigning as the pound-for-pound king in the mid-to-late 1990’s.

Jones now resides at the other end of the spectrum from the up-and-coming Hanshaw. At 38 years old with a record of 50-4 (38) KO’s, Roy has lost three of his last four fights – two by knockout. Many feel the expiration date on Jones’ 18 year-long professional career passed after he beat Johnny Ruiz in 2004 for the WBA heavyweight title. But, as he often does, Jones feels differently about things.

After arriving 45 minutes late for last week’s press conference (which is early for him) Jones told the assembled media that, “There’s plenty of boxing life left in me yet. I’m taking this fight to measure myself. No one can hold me to a greater standard than I hold myself and I will use Hanshaw as my measuring stick. I’m coming not only to win but to win big and to shine from start to finish.”

Jones hasn’t fought since an ill-conceived match last July in Boise, Idaho against Camden New Jersey’s version of royalty – “Prince” Badi Ajamu. Jones showed flashes of his old self against Ajamu and after a rocky first round he pecked his way to a near shutout on the judges’ scorecards. Although he won a fairly easy unanimous twelve-round decision the fight was not entertaining largely because Ajamu simply stopped fighting after the first round and the few fans that turned out to see Jones perform were disappointed in his effort. The affair also performed poorly on television pay-per-view.

After the Ajamu fight, when asked if he was going to retire, Jones said, “I don't have a clue ... I'm not leaning either way.” And in reference to those that control boxing behind the scenes, Jones said, “It all depends if they make it worth my while.”

Since then, there have been rumors of Jones fighting Bernard Hopkins in a rematch and against Puerto Rico’s Manny Siaca. However, both of those fights fell through when Jones objected to the terms of the contracts and the amount of money that he was going to be paid.

Jones is a meticulous, bottom-line negotiator and despite having a reversal of fortune in the boxing ring he still believes he is the star performer that the fans are coming to see. As a result, he also believes that he deserves the lion’s share of the purse money and that issue makes for stickling impasses when deals are being hammered out. “No one can dictate to me,” says Jones, “because when I go into that ring, it’s my life that’s on the line.”

Although he has lost much of his God-given gifts of speed and quickness over the past four years (as well as his ability to take a punch) Jones has lost none of his brandish manner and the way in which he views himself is through rose colored glasses.

While he didn’t refer to himself in the third person while speaking with reporters last week, he did seem to want to set the record straight and let the people know why he is still fighting. “I’m ready, willing and able to prove that I still have what it takes to be a world champion once more. That’s why I’m fighting a young, tough, strong, undefeated guy like Anthony Hanshaw.”

Jones claimed that he tried to make a fight with universally recognized super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe, but he said, “Joe Calzaghe…does not want any part of me.”

To hear Jones tell it, Hanshaw was not first on his list of opponents. He said that former conqueror Glen Johnson had a title fight eliminator that he just fought against Montell Griffin, and middleweight champion Jermain Taylor just fought Cory Spinks leaving them both unavailable for a July fight. Then, throwing on his promoter’s hat, Jones said, “The only guy that stepped up to the plate, that has the ability, was Anthony Hanshaw.”

While he has held titles at middleweight, super middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight and is a certain first ballot hall of famer, Jones felt obligated to defend his return to the ring and wanted to let everyone know that even though Hanshaw was hand-picked by him to be the opponent that it’s still a fight worth coming to see. ”I love to do what I do,” said an unapologetic Jones “And I’m back to doing what I do.”

When the choice of Hanshaw as the foil was called into question, Jones went on the defensive again, “I don’t go around looking for a guy I can beat, I go around looking for a challenge,” he cawed.

As for Anthony Hanshaw, he seemed to be in awe of the entire situation and he gazed at Jones like a schoolboy staring at a boyhood hero. Hanshaw was clearly playing the second fiddle to Jones’ one-man show and when they put the microphone in front of him he seemed perplexed. “July 14th?” asked a rhetorical Hanshaw, “That’s my time. Roy Jones had his time. But on July 14th, that’s my time to shine.”

Murad Muhammad is the co-promoter of this show. And even though he reportedly still owes fellow promoter Lou DiBella $85,000 and a San Antonio, Texas area hotel $25,000 for expenses in relation to Evander Holyfield’s fight last November against Fres Oquendo, he still has a license to sell fights.

Hanshaw seemed uncomfortable speaking in front of people and hyping a major event so Muhammad, who is as creative with the English language as any linguist has ever been, stepped in to fill the void. “Anthony wants to prove that it’s the end for Roy Jones. He wants to prove that he should be a seven-figure fighter so he’s got beat a legend to do that. This is a platform for this young man. He feels like he is the un-crowned champ.”

If Hanshaw takes the fight to Jones, sets a fast pace and actually doesn’t fall for the trick of letting Jones jive him, he stands a great chance to beat the aging Jones and perhaps retire him for good. However, Jones is a psychological master in the ring and in over 50 pro fights only Antonio Tarver has been able to win the mind game that Jones plays.

On first and second look, Hanshaw doesn’t figure to be up to the task as this will be his first crack at the big time and the first occasion he will be on a big stage. Hanshaw is likely to get snared by the traps that Roy Jones will set for him both inside and outside the ring and after a few rounds Jones will do what he wants with the novice. Jones is as calculating outside the ring ropes as he is inside them and he wouldn’t have chosen to fight Hanshaw had he felt a threat or that Hanshaw could have a chance to win.

As for Jones, he says he’s a performer and a showstopper and when asked about his certain induction to the hall of fame and his advancing age he didn’t want to hear about either one. “The Hall of Fame?” asked Jones, “Well, that’ll be nice, but I’m not ready for that and I’m not ready for any rocking chair, either. Age is just a number, I promise you that, because you’ll see more than flashes of the Roy Jones, Jr. that made all that boxing history.”

And then, like the ruler of the roost that he still thinks he is, Roy Jones, Jr. strutted out the door and flew the coop.


May 2007

Primitive way to protect ur car!!







Tuesday, May 22, 2007

CAN JERMAIN TAYLOR MAKE IT RIGHT?


Stick around the game of boxing for a while and nothing is good enough anymore.

Undefeated champions become nothing more than “untested and unproven” promotional creations. Everyone is calling the largest selling pay-per-view match in boxing history a “stink fight” that didn’t live up to its hype. There are too many titles, too many divisions and everyone from the alphabet sanctioning bodies to the networks to the promoters are “greedy, incompetent or corrupt.”

And don’t forget the often-uttered barb; “Boxing is dead”.

For undefeated middleweight champion Jermain “Bad Intentions” Taylor, who is forced to fight opponents in the ring and the muckrakers outside of it, even winning isn’t good enough anymore.

Boxing writers, fans and those who lurk in the Internet chat rooms and criticize from behind far away keyboards say that Jermain Taylor winning close decisions just isn’t going to cut it. They say Jermain Taylor has to look spectacular and that he’s been involved in too many close decisions for their liking. They say he’s being paid too much - to fight opponents who are too little. Playing on his nickname, they’ve taken to calling him “Bad Impressions” Taylor and “Bad Decisions” Taylor.

He’s now two years into a middleweight title reign that shows two disputed decision wins over certain hall of fame inductee Bernard Hopkins. Then there was the draw against the always perplexing southpaw with a defense just as puzzling named Winky Wright. After that came another decision win against the smallish, lefty Kassim Ouma who most thought Taylor should have been able to easily knock out.

And this past Saturday night, on the heels of all those distance fights, came another mathematical escape and near loss against the nimble-footed and feather-fisted Cory Spinks who is another confusing stylist that also fights from the left-handed stance.

The bandwagon jumpers say that since Jermain Taylor abandoned his original trainer Pat Burns and hunkered down in the basement of the Kronk gym with Emanuel Steward that his development has “stagnated” and that he’s actually “regressed” as a fighter.

Even the usually affable Steward’s frustration began to bleed through on Saturday night as he pleaded in the corner with his young charge to implement the instructions that he seemed unwilling to hear.

At only 28 years old Taylor is generally regarded as the true middleweight champion of the world. He has the security of an HBO contract and the numbers on his bank statements tell him that he’s a millionaire several times over. He has a beautiful young family and an undefeated record of 27-0-1 (17) KO’s. On top of all that he has the type of engaging personality, clear eyes and bright smile that make him a natural in front of the television cameras.

But none of that is enough to keep the jackals that nip at his reputation away from the door. They bark that they want more from Jermain Taylor and they want him to fight with the temper of a tiger - and not with the anger of a mouse.

Jermain Taylor’s main problem is that somewhere along the way he lost his swagger in the ring.

Coming up through the professional ranks as the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games bronze medal winner he burned through the usual assortment of club fighters and fringe contenders. He was 23-0 (17) KO’s when he took the title in an upset from Bernard Hopkins in July 2005 and after he beat Hopkins in the rematch there looked to be no stopping the young fistic phenom from Little Rock, Arkansas.

But since winning the title he has failed to impress, and Saturday’s tepid affair against Cory Spinks have boxing pundits questioning whether Taylor will ever bloom and flower into his full potential.

Many feel Taylor should have used his size and strength advantages to bowl Spinks over and make a statement on his way to an emphatic victory. But again, fans were left disappointed with Taylor’s effort and many questioned whether he even deserved the split-decision win over Spinks.

"I felt like I did what I had to do to win,” said a wary Taylor after the decision of the judges was announced. “It was like a chess match but I felt like I was doing all the chasing.”

The fight took place at the FedEx Forum in Memphis, Tennessee, which is fitting because many feel that Taylor mailed in his effort. Memphis is only 135 miles from Little Rock and there were several thousand fans that made the trip from Arkansas to support Taylor but that didn’t stop them from booing his performance.

When asked if he heard the unhappy customers Taylor said, “Yeah, I heard that. But it’s hard to hit him with more than two or three punches because he gets so low.” This was Taylor’s way of blaming his poor performance on Spinks’ style and that it was actually Cory who was responsible for the boring contest. Then Taylor added, “I’m used to a fight and to a person coming in there and trying to kill me.”

Taylor’s trainer, Emanuel Steward, also blamed the non-fight on Spinks who was fighting for the first time as a middleweight and appeared speedy and comfortable in the higher weight division. “Who's going to look good with Cory Spinks?” Steward asked. “All you want to do is get the win and move on. Cory Spinks was jabbing and before the punch got out, he was running backwards already!” said a disgusted Steward.

Granted, Spinks is a difficult fighter to look good against. He didn’t stand still long enough to throw more than a couple punches at a time and in many of the rounds he landed no more than a handful of shots. It was Taylor that came forward all night and tried to make a fight of it.

However, the criticism that is being heaped upon Taylor is for his almost non-effort and for his lack of urgency in a fight that was close on the scorecards. Many point to the fact that Spinks was knocked out by Zab Judah as a 147-pound welterweight and they expected more from Taylor who promised before the fight that he was going to bring the goods.

“It's important to me to look good and win,” said Taylor. “The last couple of fights, I haven't looked as good as I was supposed to look. I tried to knock people out, and I looked sloppy. I know I'm a better fighter than that. I want to use my jab more and stop looking for the knockout. I'm anxious to show everything I learned in training camp.”

Whatever the case with training camp and what his thoughts were going into the fight – none of it came to fruition. Taylor was thrown off from the beginning by Spinks’ awkward and slippery style and he just never found his offensive groove. It wasn’t until the sixth round that he pulled even with Spinks on my scorecard. In the end, I had it 115-113 for Taylor but he had to win the last round in my book to avoid a draw. Taylor did enough to retain his title but the fight was much closer than it ultimately should have been.

Where this leaves Taylor is anybody’s guess. There are rumors that he has a very difficult time fitting his body into its 160-pound suit and that he has to sacrifice to make weight. That could be one reason why he has come up flat in his recent fights. A bout against Joe Calzaghe, the super middleweight champion from Wales, has been talked about in the press, but the two promotional sides seem far apart on monetary issues and whether the fight should take place in the United Kingdom or the United States.

The fight that would make all the criticism go away, and a fight in which Taylor and his promoter Lou DiBella could keep the lion’s share of the money, is against undefeated #1 contender Kelly “Ghost” Pavlik from Youngstown, Ohio.

Pavlik is looming large on the horizon and he engaged in a scintillating shoot-out against top contender Edison Miranda on the Taylor versus Spinks undercard. More importantly, Pavlik won by way of an electrifying knockout in the seventh round and in his second straight appearance on HBO he proved that he is an exciting fighter that can talk the talk and walk the walk.

Pavlik carries thudding power in both fists and he possesses a sparkling record of 31-0 (28) KO’s. He just turned 25 years old and if Jermain Taylor wants someone to stand and fight with him then Kelly Pavlik has proven he is that man.

Taylor was apprehensive to say that he definitely wanted a fight with Kelly Pavlik next. He did say he would fight “anybody” but he didn’t mention Pavlik directly. HBO boxing analyst Larry Merchant pressed the Pavlik issue with Taylor and eventually cornered him into confessing that “I’ll fight Pavlik, but let’s get the money right,” said Taylor.

Then, sensing that he sounded as though he may be avoiding the Pavlik challenge, Taylor became more assertive and threw down the gauntlet. “Yeah, I'll fight him,” he said. “It doesn't make a difference…we can fight next month.”

One thing is now certain: Jermain Taylor is a champion under fire. The naysayers keep furrowing their collective brows and they keep pointing their long fingers of doubt in his direction. And he wants nothing more than for them to all go away.

If he accepts the fight against Kelly Pavlik, he’ll have his one chance to silence the doubters.

And then Jermain Taylor just might be able to make everything that seems so wrong with his sputtering career, right.


May 2007

Strangest Disaster of 20th Century

Here’s the story of how scientists unlocked the secrets of the worst natural disaster in the history of the West African nation of Cameroon… and what they’re doing to try and stop it from happening again.

THE DISCOVERY

On the morning of August 22, 1986, a man hopped onto his bicycle and began riding from Wum, a village in Cameroon, towards the village of Nyos. On the way he noticed an antelope lying dead next to the road. Why let it go to waste? The man tied the antelope onto his bicycle and continued on. A short distance later he noticed two dead rats, and further on, a dead dog and other dead animals. He wondered if they’d all been killed by a lightening strike – when lightening hits the ground it’s not unusual for animals nearby to be killed by the shock.

Soon the man came upon a group of huts. He decided to see if anyone there knew what had happened to the animals. But as he walked up to the huts he was stunned to see dead bodies strewn everywhere. He didn’t find a single person still alive—everyone in the huts was dead. The man threw down his bicycle and ran all the way back to Wum.

SOMETHING BIG


Nyos village, where nearly 2,000 people were killed

By the time the man got back to the village, the first survivors of whatever it was that had struck Nyos and other nearby villages were already stumbling into Wum. Many told tales of hearing an explosion or rumbling noise in the distance, then smelling strange smells and passing out for as long as 36 hours before waking up to discover that everyone around them was dead.

Wum is in a remote part of Cameroon, so it took two days for a medical team to arrive in the area after local officials called the governor to report the strange occurrence. The doctors found a catastrophe far greater than they could have imagined: Overnight, something had killed nearly 1,800 people. Plus more than 3,000 cattle and countless wild animals, birds and insects—in short every living creature for miles around.

The official death toll was recorded as 1,746 people, but that was only an estimate, because the survivors had already begun to bury victims in mass graves, and many terrified survivors had fled corpse-filled villages and were hiding in the forest. Whatever it was that killed so many people seemed to have disappeared without a trace just as quickly as it had come.

LOOKING FOR CLUES

What could have caused so many deaths in such a short span of time? When word of the disaster reached the outside world, scientists from France (Cameroon is a former French colony), the United States, and other countries arrived to help the country’s own scientists figure out what had happened. The remains if the victims offered few clues. There was no evidence of bleeding, physical trauma, or disease, and no sign of exposure to radiation, chemical weapons, or poison gas. And there was no evidence of suffering or “death agony”: The victims apparently just blacked out, fell over, and died.

One of the first important clues was the distribution of the victims across the landscape: The deaths had all occurred within about 12 miles of Lake Nyos, which some local tribes called the “bad lake.” Legend had that long ago, evil spirits had risen out of the lake and killed all the people living in a village at the water’s edge.

Both the number of victims and the presence of fatalities increased as the scientists got closer to the lake: In the outlying villages many people, especially those who had remained inside their homes, had survived, while in Nyos, which is less than two miles away was the closest village to the lake, only 6 of more than 800 villagers were still alive.

But it was the lake itself that provided the biggest and strangest clue of all: its normally clear blue waters has turned a deep, murky red. The scientists began to wonder if there was more to the legend of the “bad lake” than anyone had realized.

STILL LIFE

Lake Nyos is roughly one square mile in surface area and has a maximum depth of 690 feet. It’s what’s known as a “crater lake”—it formed when the crater of a long-extinct volcano filled with water. But was the volcano really extinct? Maybe an eruption was the culprit: Maybe the volcano beneath the lake had come back to life and in the process suddenly released enough poison gas to kill every living creature over a very wide area.

The theory was compelling but problematic: An eruption capable of releasing enough poison gas to kill that many people over that wide an area would have been very violent and accompanied by plenty of seismic activity. None of the eyewitnesses had mentioned earthquakes, and when the scientists checked with seismic recording station 140 miles away, it showed no evidence of unusual activity on the evening of August 21. This was backed up by the fact that even in the hardest-hit villages, goods were still piled high on shelves in homes where every member of the house-hold had been killed. And the scientists noticed another mysterious clue: The oil lamps in these homes had all been extinguished even the ones still filled with plenty of oil.

TESTING THE WATERS

The scientists began to test water samples taken from various depths in the lake. The red on the surface turned out to be dissolved iron—normally found on the bottom of the lake, not the top. Somehow the sediment at the bottom had been stirred up and the iron brought to the surface, where it turned the color of rust after coming into contact with oxygen.

The scientists also discovered unusually high levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) dissolved or “in solution” in the water. Samples from a as shallow as 50 feet deep contained so much CO2 that when they were pulled to the surface, where the water pressure was lower, the dissolved CO2 came bubbling out of solution—just as if someone had unscrewed the cap on a bottle of soda.

CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE

As the scientists took samples from deeper and deeper in Lake Nyos, the
already high carbon dioxide (CO2) levels climbed steadily higher. At the 600 foot depth, the levels suddenly shot off the charts. Beyond that depth, the CO2 levels were so high that when the scientists tried to pull the samples to the surface, the containers burst from the pressure of all the gas that came out of solution. The scientists had to switch to pressurized containers to collect their samples, and when they did they were stunned to find that the water at the bottom of the lake contained five gallons of dissolved CO2 for every gallon of water.

As the scientists pieced together the evidence, they began to form a theory that centered around the large amount of CO2 in the lake. The volcano that formed Lake Nyos may have been long extinct, but the magma chamber that fed it was still active deep below the surface of the Earth. And it was still releasing carbon dioxide gas—not just into Lake Nyos, but into the surrounding environment as well. In fact, it’s not uncommon in Cameroon to find frogs and other small animals suffocated in CO2 “puddles” that have formed in low points along the ground. (CO2 is heavier than air and can pool in low spots until the wind blows it away.)

But what was unusual about Lake Nyos wasn’t that there was CO2 in the lake; that happens in lakes all over the world. What was unusual was that the CO2 had apparently never left—instead of bubbling to the surface and dissipating into the air, the CO2 was accumulating at the bottom of the lake.

UPS AND DOWNS

In most lakes CO2 escaped because the water is continually circulating, thanks to a process known as convection: Rain, cold weather or even just wind blowing across the surface of the lake can cause the topmost layer of water to cool, making it denser and therefore heavier than the warmer layer below. The cool water sinks to the bottom of the lake, displacing the warmer, CO2 rich water and pushing it higher enough for the CO2 to come out of the solution, bubble to the surface, and escape into the air.

STILL WATERS RUN DEEP

That’s what usually happens, but the water at the bottom of Lake Nyos was so saturated with CO2 that it was clear that something was interfering with the convection process. As the scientists soon discovered, the waters of Lake Nyos are among the most still in the world: Tall hills surround the lake, blocking the wind and causing the lake to be unusually consistent in temperature from the surface to the bottom. And because Lake Nyos is in a tropical climate that remains hot all year round, the water temperature doesn’t vary much from season to season, either. Lastly, because the lake is so deep, even when the surface is disturbed, very little of the agitation finds its way to the lake floor. The unusual stillness of the lake is what made it so deadly.

FULL TO BURSTING

There is a physical limit to how much CO2 water can absorb, even under the tremendous pressured that exist at the bottom of a 690 foot deep lake. As the bottom layers become saturated, the CO2 is pushed up to where the pressure is low enough for it to start coming out of solution. At this point any little disturbance—a landslide, stormy weather, or even high winds or just a cold snap—can cause the CO2 to begin bubbling to the surface. And when the bubbles start rising, they can cause a siphoning or “chimney” effect, triggering a chain reaction that in one giant upheaval can cause the lake to disgorge CO2 that has been accumulating in the lake for decades.

CO2 is odorless, colorless, and non-toxic; your body produces it and you exhale some every time you breathe. Even the air you inhale consists of about 0.05% CO2. What makes it a killer in certain circumstances is that fact that it’s heavier than air: If enough escapes into the environment at once, it displaces the air on the ground, making breathing impossible. A mixture of as little as 10% CO2 in the air can be fatal: even 5% can smother a flame…which explained why the oil lamps went out.

SNUFFED OUT

The scientists figured that if their theory was correct, there might be other instances of similar eruptions in the past. It didn’t take very long to find one, and they didn’t have to look very far, either: Two years earlier, on August 15, 1984, a loud boom was heard coming from Lake Monoun, a crater lake just 59 miles southeast of Lake Nyos. In the hours that followed, 37 people died mysteriously, including a group of 17 people who died while walking to work when the came to a low point in the road—just the place where CO2 would have settled after being released from the lake. The incident was small enough that it hadn’t attracted much attention from the outside world…until now.

THE BIG BANG

In the months following the disaster at Lake Nyos, the scientists continued to monitor the lake’s CO2 levels. When the levels began to increase again, they concluded that their theory was correct.

In the meantime, they had also come up with an estimate of just how much CO2 had escaped from the lake on August 22—and were stunned by what they found. Eyewitness accounts from people who were high enough in the hills above the lake to survive the eruption described how the lake began bubbling strangely on August 17, causing a misty cloud to form above the surface of the water. Then without warning, on August 22, the lake suddenly exploded; water and gas shot a couple of hundred feet into the air. The CO2 had taken up so much space in the lake that when it was finally released 1.2 cubic kilometers of CO2—enough to fill 10 football stadiums—in as little as 20 seconds. (Are you old enough to remember the huge volume of ash that Mt. Saint Helens released when it erupted in 1980? That eruption released only 1/3 of one cubic kilometer of ash—a quarter of Lake Nyos’s emission.)

CLOUD OF DOOM


Grazing cattle killed in the 1986 Lake Nyos disaster (Image Credit: Water Encyclopedia)

Cattle herders graze their animals on the hills above Lake Nyos, and after the lake disgorged as much as 80% of its massive store of CO2 in one big burst, dead cattle were found as high as 300 feet above the lake, indicating that the suffocating cloud shot at least that high before settling back onto the surface. Then the gas poured over the crater’s edge into the valley below, traveling at an estimated 45 miles per hour.

For people living in the village closest to the lake, death was almost inevitable. A few people on hillsides had the presence of mind to climb to higher ground; one man who saw his neighbors drop like flies jumped on his motorcycle and managed to keep ahead of the gas as he sped to safety. There were the lucky few. Most people didn’t realize the danger until they were being overcome by the gas. Even if they had, it would have been impossible to outrun such a fast-moving cloud.

CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT

In villages father away from the lake, people had a better chance of survival, especially if they ignored the noise the lake made as it disgorged its CO2. Some survivors said it sounded like a gunshot or an explosion; others described it as a rumble. But people who stepped outside their homes to see where the noise had come from, or to see what had caused the rotten egg smell (a common smell “hallucination” associated with CO2 poisoning) quickly collapsed and died right on their own doorsteps. The sight of these first victims passing out often brought other members of the household to the door, where they, too, were overcome…and killed.

People who were inside with their windows and doors shut had a better chance of surviving. There were even cases where enough CO2 seeped into homes to smother people who were lying down asleep, but not enough to kill the people who were standing up and had their heads above the gas. Some of these survivors did not even realize anything unusual had happened until they checked on their sleeping loved ones and discovered they were already dead.

AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION

The disaster at Lake Nyos was only the second such incident in the recorded history—the 1984 incident at Lake Monoun was the first. To date, scientists believe that only three lakes in the entire world, Nyos, Monoun, and a third lake called Lake Kivu on the border of Congo and Rwanda, accumulate deadly amounts of dissolved CO2 at great depths.

It had taken about a year to figure out what had happened at Nyos. Then, when it became clear that the lake was filling with CO2 again, the government of Cameroon evacuated all the villages within 18 miles of the lake and razed them to prevent their inhabitants from coming back until the lake could be made safe.

Scientists spent the next decade trying to figure out a way to safely release the gas before disaster struck again. They eventually settled on a plan to sink a 51/2-inch diameter tube down more than 600 feet, to just above the floor of the lake. Then when some of the water from the bottom was up to the top of the tube, it would rise high enough in the tube for the CO2 to come out of solution and form bubbles, which would cause it to shoot out the top of the tube, blasting water and gas more than 150 feet into the sky. Once it got started, the siphon effect would cause the reaction to continue indefinitely, or at least until the CO2 ran out. A prototype was installed and tested in 1995, and after it proved to be safe, a permanent tube was installed in 2001.

RACE AGAINST TIME

As of the fall of 2006 the tube was still in place releasing more than 700 million cubic feet of CO2 into the air each year. That’s a little bit more than enters the lake in the same amount of time. Between 2001 and 2006, the CO2 levels in Lake Nyos dropped 13%.

But the scientists who study the lake are concerned that 13% is still too small an amount. The lake still contains more CO2 than was released in the 1986 disaster, and as if that’s not bad enough, a natural dam on the north side of the lake is eroding and could fail in as little as five years. If the dam collapses, the disaster of 1986 may prove to be just a small taste of things to come: In the event of a dam failure, 50 million cubic meters of water could pour out of the lake, drowning as many as 10,000 as it washed through the valleys below. That’s only the beginning—releasing that much water from the lake would cause the level of the lake to drop as much as 130 feet, removing the water pressure that keeps the CO2 at the bottom of the lake and causing a release of gas even more catastrophic than the devastation of 1986.

SOLUTION


Degassing Lake Nyos

Scientists and engineers have devised a plan for shoring up the natural dam with concrete, and it’s believed that the installation of as few as for more siphon tubes could reduce the CO2 in the lake to safe levels in as little as four years. The scientists are hard at work trying to find the funding to do it, and there’s no time to waste: “We could have a gas burst tomorrow that is bigger than either (the Lake Monoun or Lake Nyos) disaster,“ says Dr. George Kling, a University of Michigan ecologist who has been studying the lake for 20 years. “Every day we wait is just an accumulation of the probability that something bad is going to happen.