The volcano, Mount Karthala, flexed its muscles in 2005, spewing ash across most of Grande Comore and instilling a sense of foreboding in its 300,000 residents. Relatively young at about 130,000 years old, it is the only active volcano in the three-island nation, although the archipelago was created by volcanic activity.
Karthala's behaviour has changed since 1995; before, volcanic activity occurred only about once every decade, but these days it is becoming an almost annual occurrence, with differing degrees of severity. The 2005 eruption was not only a major health risk - inconclusive studies suggest that two days of volcanic dust inhalation is equivalent to a 30-year smoking habit - but highlighted the island's unpreparedness for dealing with disaster.
A recent conference organised by the Government of Comoros and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Grande Comore's capital, Moroni, which drew some of the world's foremost specialists on volcanoes, set out to develop a holistic blueprint for disaster response and also attempted to highlight any silver lining that living adjacent to an active volcano might have.
It is a tough sell trying to convince residents that there are benefits to residing on the cusp of oblivion, and members of the public attending the conference made it plain that Karthala was an unwelcome feature; one person even asked whether it could not be doused with seawater, much like snuffing out a candle?
Patrick Bachelery, a conference delegate and volcanologist based at the Department of Earth Sciences at the Université de la Réunion, on the French island of Reunion, east of Madagascar, provided a sobering response. Sea water seeping into the Krakatoa volcanic system was thought to have caused the world's biggest modern eruption in 1883, equivalent to 200 megatons of high explosives, or 13,000 times more powerful than the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
"In countries where there are volcanoes we have the same problem of fear; with Karthala there are many myths around the volcano and it will take a long time to change these perceptions. The best way is through education, from primary school through to university education," Bachelery told IRIN.
"If a child is educated about a volcano, the child can come home from the school and explain to his parents the functioning of a volcano. It is a good thing."
Information gaps needed to be addressed, such as activity in the submerged part of the volcanic system, the security of residents and the risk of tsunamis, but all this required "a lot of funding," he said.
Bachelery's fascination with Karthala began 20 years ago. He lives on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion, an overseas department of France, where there is another active volcano, Piton de la Fournaise (Peak of the Furnace). With French Government funding, Bachelery established the Karthala Volcano Observatory, which monitors and researches the volcano and also provides an early warning system for its activities. Since 2007, UNDP has become a major funder of the observatory.
Karthala, like Piton de la Fournaise, is classed as a Hawaiian-type volcano, although Karthala's relative youth means that Grand Comore is criss-crossed with fissures, making for unpredictable lava flows. About four kilometres of Karthala's six-kilometre volcanic system is submerged, while the remaining 2,360m rises steeply from the sea. Despite 20 years of observation, dogged by funding shortages, it has revealed few of its secrets.
Reunion has a well developed disaster preparedness plan in place for its 800,000 residents, even though, unlike Karthala, the Piton de la Fournaise is remote and without any human settlements on its slopes.
Jean-Claude Gaillard, of the Université Joseph Fourrier in Grenoble, France, presenting a paper on reducing the risks of volcanoes, said the victims of disaster were usually "victims of other things, such as hunger, social marginalisation and economics". He said it was the poor who were most vulnerable, because land on the slopes of volcanoes was generally cheaper, and the dangers of volcanic activity were not as immediate as the threats of poverty, such as hunger, disease and landlessness.
Hamid Soule, a volcanologist at the Karthala Observatory in Moroni, told the conference that the 2005 eruption illustrated the difficulties of predicting volcanic activity. The impending scale of the 2005 eruption, which dumped ash up to five metres deep on the island and contaminated scarce water supplies, was only realized two hours before the event.
Karthala's known threats, Soule said, were lava flows, to which Moroni and its airport were vulnerable, ash, poisonous gases such as carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide, mudslides, earthquakes and - "not very probable, but possible" - that part of the mountain would split off and fall into the sea, resulting in tsunamis.
Initial investigations by the Kenya Electricity Generating Company into the possibility of producing electricity using geothermal technology on Grand Comore were very encouraging, the company's chief geologist, Geoffrey Muchemi, told the conference.
Geothermal power is energy generated by heat stored in the earth and extracted from sources like magma, hot water or steam, the decay of uranium, potassium or thorium, which can be used to run turbines and thereby produce electricity. About 20 countries in the world use "clean" geothermal energy. Iceland, one of the leading producers, obtains 17 percent of its power requirement from this source.
Grand Comore's residents feel they are literally between the devil and the deep blue sea. Karthala is blamed for many ills, from the hot sticky climate to the fouling of drinking water, and any suggestion that it might improve lives is met with disbelief.