Tens of thousands flee Goma, fearing lava and, perhaps, deadly gas

THEY GRABBED blankets, clothes and mattresses and rushed out of their houses at dawn. In their tens of thousands, they streamed out the city of Goma, in eastern Congo, terrified of what its volcano might do next. Some fled east towards the nearby border with Rwanda. Others hurried west to the Congolese town of Sake, around 20km away, clogging the dirt road from Goma with motorbikes, cars, trucks and pedestrians. Hundreds of people rushed down to Goma’s port to pile onto boats heading to Bukavu, a city across the lake.The exodus began in the early hours of May 27th, when the governor of North Kivu, the province that includes Goma, ordered the immediate evacuation of about 600,000 residents in the centre of the city; perhaps another 1.5m live in other parts of Goma and many of them did not wait to be ordered to leave. The governor, Lieutenant-General Constant Ndima, announced that Mount Nyiragongo might erupt again at any moment. It was only five days since lava had of Mount Nyiragongo and streamed towards this ramshackle city.