The apocalypse did not materialize, the megacity of Goma in the far east of the Congo was spared.

On Saturday evening around 7 p.m. local time, the Nyiragongo volcano erupted with all its might.

Thousands of people ran out of their homes, the streets were panic and several earthquakes were reported.

The neighboring country of Rwanda took in 3,500 people that night.

In large parts of Goma the power went out.

There the sky was colored red towards the north, memories of earlier eruptions were awakened.

According to official information, nobody was injured or killed by the hot lava.

According to local media reports, however, a bus that was supposed to evacuate people crashed.

Some people were killed in the process.

Martin Franke

Editor on duty at FAZ.NET.

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    The all-clear followed on Sunday. The lava flow came to a standstill just before the airport north of the city. Tourists who were at the crater at the time of the eruption are doing well. According to official information, the mountain gorillas in the surrounding Virunga National Park are not threatened by the disaster. 

    Goma and the east of the Congo got away with one more black eye. Because the Nyiragongo is unpredictable. The extent of the volcanic activity was not foreseeable on the evening of the volcanic eruption. Some residents and observers expected a disaster for the region; the government had the city evacuated as a precaution late in the evening. The metropolis lies in the middle of the rift between the African and Arab plates, which will split off in millions of years. Lake Kivu stretches to the south of Goma, Rwanda to the east, the vast Congo to the west - and only a few kilometers north of the city of Nyiragongo, one of the largest and most dangerous volcanoes in the world.

    The volcano's crater is 3,000 meters high at its edges and around 1.5 kilometers in diameter.

    Inside, where there is a lava lake that could cover entire cities meters high, it goes down to a depth of 2500 meters.

    The higher the lava lake rises, the greater the pressure.

    The level in the crater is therefore an indicator of the threat to the volcano.

    Temperatures of 1200 degrees prevail in the boiler.

    But even without an outbreak, the Nyiragongo is the country's largest emitter of pollutants.

    Every day the volcano emits up to 50,000 tons of sulfur dioxide: That is more than the entire industry, economy and all cars together produce in the USA.

    Lava at 100 kilometers per hour

    Occasionally, magma from the Nyiragongo heats the lake's water. Researchers say that the lake gurgles meanwhile. Nyiragongo is also more dangerous than other volcanoes because its secretions are thinner. In the depths, the proportion of silica is lower, which leads to the higher viscosity of magma and makes it sticky. In 2002 a hot lava flow shot up to Lake Kivu at 100 kilometers per hour, killing around 150 people and leaving more than 120,000 homeless. Two-thirds of the airport runway was swallowed by the hot lava, and the lake was finally boiled. An eruption in 1977 claimed 2,000 lives.

    The volcano empties every ten to 20 years. The city, which had around 500,000 inhabitants in 2007, is currently home to an estimated two million people due to the influx of civil war refugees. Goma lies in one of the volcano's two drainage channels. If the nearby airport were to be destroyed, the metropolis would be as good as cut off from the outside world. The United Nations moved its planes to safety at other airports on Saturday. The United Nations Monusco mission had previously sent a helicopter on a reconnaissance flight and wrote on Twitter that the lava "does not appear to be moving towards Goma". When it later became apparent that the lava could get closer to the city than expected, the Congolese accused the UN on Twitter ofthat it is spreading misinformation and risking death. So far, it has been the political crises that have turned out to be the greater danger for eastern Congo.

    Since the accident of 2002 geologists and volcanologists have been trying to monitor the Nyiragongo.

    One problem, however, is that in the course of this, the researchers repeatedly lose expensive equipment and the research stays are threatened by raids by numerous local militias.

    Meanwhile, several small earthquakes from Goma were reported on Sunday;

    Pictures on social media show sources of fire.

    Residents are not allowed to return to central Goma without government approval.

    The country's president, Felix Tshisekedi, interrupted his trip to Europe on Saturday and announced that he would return to Congo on Sunday.