Shouts of joy greet food arrival in Congo

GOMA, Congo -- Thousands of people ran cheering into Unity Stadium on Wednesday to collect the first food aid delivered to Goma since a devastating volcanic eruption a week ago.

The World Food Program, assisted by other aid agencies, distributed 22.5 tons of food -- enough to feed 70,000 people for a week -- agency spokeswoman Laura Melo said. Food was handed out at 10 places in Goma, a city on the border with Rwanda.

Although Mount Nyiragongo, 12 miles north of Goma, erupted Jan. 17, delivery of relief food was delayed by uncertainty over whether the eruptions would continue.

The eruption sent lava streaming into Goma, a city of 500,000, covering more than 30 percent of the residential areas and consuming 90 percent of the business district.

Josephine Vomeliere, 30, was waiting at Unity Stadium to collect food for her family of seven.

"Since the volcano erupted, I've had nothing to eat," said Vomeliere, whose house was destroyed. "We need help to get food, to rebuild our homes, to solve the problems of our country."

Hilaire Muhima Bungwa, chief of Goma's Banga district, said even though some shops in town were selling food, most people could not afford it.

"The prices are exorbitant," Bungwa said. "The market was destroyed, there is no business, so no one has any money .... The people who lived in the houses that were destroyed have come to our homes with nothing but their children, who are hungry."

Goma was one of the few centers in eastern Congo with a functioning economy, and the destruction of its businesses spells hardship for residents.

On Wednesday, the World Food Program gave families a week's allotment of beans, corn flour, corn-soy flour and cooking oil.

The food was a high point for people who have been sleeping outdoors as earthquakes -- which commonly accompany volcanic eruptions -- shook the region. Clouds of steam rose from the hot, hardened lava as heavy rain fell in Goma.

"All those tremors are damaging buildings in Goma and Gisenyi," Congolese vulcanologist Dieudonne Wafula said, referring to the town across the border in Rwanda. "Some tremors even take place without us noticing; the danger is that they all have a cumulative effect."

The International Federation of Red Cross Societies has put the number of dead from the eruption at 46. An estimated 50 other people were killed when lava ignited fumes at a gas station where people were trying to siphon off gasoline and diesel fuel.

People continued to scrounge through the destroyed buildings Wednesday, trying to gather anything of value, especially scorched tin sheeting, which they can use to cobble together simple shelters.

Two boys who had managed to recover a bathtub tried to sell it.

The 11,381-foot high Nyiragongo and 10,022-foot Nyamulagira volcanoes north of Goma are the only active ones in the eight-volcano Virunga chain. Nyiragongo last erupted seriously in 1977.