It was four days after the eruption that Christopher Horsley ran into rebels. The British photographer had spent the previous night camped near the summit of Mount Nyiragongo, a 3,470-meter-high stratovolcano in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), enduring recurring aftershocks on the ash-covered slopes. The volcano’s sudden eruption on May 22, 2021, wreaked havoc on the surrounding area. Lava flows reached the outskirts of the city of Goma, 15 kilometers away, cutting off a key highway; at least 364,000 people were displaced, with 120,000 of them permanently losing their homes; and an estimated 32 people lost their lives.
Horsley went to the site after the initial eruption, escorted by scientists from the Goma Volcano Observatory (GVO) and a team of armed rangers from the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de le Nature (ICCN), to install a camera and timer system that could monitor Nyiragongo’s lava lake—the ever-fluctuating store of molten-lava within the crater, which has at times been the largest in the world. In the wake of Nyiragongo’s eruption, there were fears that the nearby Lake Kivu—which is thought to contain some 55 billion cubic meters of methane—might erupt as well. Such a disaster could not be allowed to happen.
The images from Horsley’s camera system would be used alongside seismic data to help the GVO predict future eruptions, and potentially save lives. But first, the group had to make it down from the mountain alive.
As they neared their basecamp, the group spotted rebel soldiers from the M23 military group—also known as the Congolese Revolutionary Army—raiding their supplies. Fearing for Horsley’s life, GVO staff gave him a hoodie and cap in an attempt to disguise his white ethnicity. Within moments, both rebels and ICCN rangers were yelling and pointing AK-47s at each other. “I thought I might have crossed the line. Being on top of an erupting volcano is one thing, but to then run into rebel organizations coming down …” Horsley says.
After much back and forth, the outnumbered rebels retreated, and the 30-year-old Liverpudlian—who had become interested in volcanoes as a child and has been photographing them since 2015—was able to get his system up and running.
Horsley is not the first European to get involved in the DRC’s volcanoes. The Belgian-backed GeoRisk Africa team formed the 15-station Kivu Geodetic Network in 2009 to monitor tectonic and volcanic activity throughout the region using real‐time telemetry. But the system was immediately plagued by vandalism and lightning strikes, and it cost up to €15,000 ($16,000) per year in repairs. (GeoRisk ended its relationship with the GVO in June 2022 after staff at the GVO accused GeoRisk of taking a “neo-colonial” attitude to sharing data—claims GeoRisk disputes.)
Believing he could do better, Horsley installed a basic Canon 5D camera and modem on Nyiragongo. Every half an hour, the camera uploads an image of the crater via the local cellular network to a Google Drive accessible by the GVO. By jettisoning the radio antenna required by telemetry, Horsley had reduced the impact of high winds and removed an obvious target for thieves and vandals. Along with a copper wire to mitigate lightning strikes and a protective case to protect against corrosive gases, his simple and inexpensive Canon formed a viable and sturdy alternative.
Another benefit is storage space. A video livestream provides low-resolution imagery, but it could still take up thousands of gigabytes of disk space. By uploading one image every 30 minutes to a cloud-based server instead, Horsley has made his data easier for the GVO to sort through, store, and study. “It was just about simplifying the system so that it would work for a volcanology department that is struggling to find a lot of funds for equipment and backend systems,” he explains.
With Nyiragongo typically erupting every 20 years, using imagery alongside seismic data to monitor the rebuilding of its lava lake and any changes to its plumbing can be an indicator of the force, direction, and potential timing of the next eruption. “We now walk with the volcano in our pocket; the activity of the volcanic lava lake almost no longer escapes our notice,” says Celestin Kasereka Mahinda, scientific director of the GVO. Before the installation of the camera, GVO scientists had to trek up to the crater three times a month—at a cost of $1,200 per trip. Now, Mahinda says, they only need to go once a month.
Next, Horsley has his sights on the nearby Nyamuragira volcano—Africa’s most active. At present, rebel activity in the area means the volcano is only accessible by UN helicopter. Horsley hopes that installing a second monitoring system there—potentially using Starlink to overcome a lack of cellular data coverage—will reduce the risk and cost to GVO scientists, while providing a more complete understanding of volcanic activity in the area.
“Congo has a lot of challenges; not just volcanic instability, but political instability, which has made operating there quite difficult,” Horsley says. He is unlikely to give up his obsession with peering down into the liquid Earth any time soon. “It’s a strange thing, when you see this crater of molten rock glowing at 1,000 degrees Celsius,” he says. “It’s like any fire—you just want to go and stand next to it. It draws you in.”
This article was originally published in the January/February 2023 issue of WIRED UK magazine.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
