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All dispatches
// ENTITY_RECORD  //  TYPE: ORGANIZATION

US Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance

// OVERVIEW

Nexor's dispatch on the Lake Nyos disaster references the US Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance as the funding body that allocated $433,000 in 1999 toward the installation of the first permanent degassing pipe at Lake Nyos. According to the broadcast, that infrastructure became operational in January 2001, representing the initial engineered response to the lake's lethal carbon dioxide accumulation following the 1986 outgassing event that killed 1,746 people.

// 1 APPEARANCES IN THE ARCHIVE

How Lake Nyos Killed 1,746 People in One Breath — and Why Lake Kivu Could Do It at 250 Times the Scale
// FILE
2026-04-17

How Lake Nyos Killed 1,746 People in One Breath — and Why Lake Kivu Could Do It at 250 Times the Scale

On the night of August 21, 1986, Lake Nyos in northwestern Cameroon released an estimated 1.2 cubic kilometers of dissolved carbon dioxide in approximately 20 seconds, suffocating 1,746 people in the surrounding villages. The phenomenon — a limnic eruption — was unknown to science until 1984. A degassing solution existed within years, but took 15 years to fund. Lake Kivu, 55 miles long and holding 250 times the CO2 of Nyos, remains only partially addressed.

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