Chah, or Cha, is a village in the
Northwest Province of
Cameroon
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It shares boundaries with Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the R ...
that was largely abandoned after the
Lake Nyos disaster
On 21 August 1986, a limnic eruption at Lake Nyos in northwestern Cameroon killed 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock.
The eruption triggered the sudden release of about 100,000–300,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2). The gas cloud initially r ...
of 1986, when an eruption of
carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalent bond, covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in a gas state at room temperature and at norma ...
from nearby
Lake Nyos
Lake Nyos ( ) is a crater lake in the Northwest Region of Cameroon, located about northwest of Yaoundé, the capital. Nyos is a deep lake high on the flank of an inactive volcano in the Oku volcanic plain along the Cameroon line of volcan ...
killed many of its inhabitants. The village's population in 2005 was 593, 147 of which were men, and 446 were women.
The village's infrastructure consists of at least seven kilometers of road, two bridges, and seven
culverts.
There are concerns about the stability of the natural rock wall that holds back the lake water. Regardless, the area was resettled after the disaster and reportedly has highly fertile soil.
References
Northwest Region (Cameroon)
{{Cameroon-geo-stub