Livestock killed and airport damaged as Dakar, Senegal, hit by dust storm.

Several planes and a terminal building have been damaged at Blaise Diagne International Airport in Dakar, Senegal, and local communities have recorded a number of livestock deaths after the city was hit by a dust storm this week, bringing with it winds of up to 90 kilometres per hour, and near zero visibility.

The approximate location of the June 2018 Dakar duststorm. Google Maps.

The dust storm is thought to have been caused by a weather phenomenon called a haboob, which occurs when thunderstorms, or forming thunderstorms, collapse, causing a rapid downdraught of air. Thunderstorms are caused by heating of the land or water surface by the sun, causing air to expand, and thus rise, this causes more air to be drawn in to fill the gap, which is in turn heated and rises, repeating the process and creating a cycle. However under some circumstances the air at the top of this column does not move away, but forms an air package in the upper atmosphere which cools in place, then collapses back down to the ground creating a cool downdraught. As this typically happens in desert areas, it can stir up a great deal of dry sediment when it reaches the ground, creating potentially harmful dust and sand storms. This process is generally associated with the interior of deserts such as the Sahara, but in this case appears to have hit the Senegalese coastal city as a storm formed around the onset of the local rainy season, possibly due to exceptionally hot conditions in the area this year, which could have caused updraughts over a wider area, preventing air from escaping from the top of the storm system.

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Paenibacillus dakarensis: A new species of Bacterium from Dakar, Senegal.

Paenibacilli are Gram variable, facultatively anaerobic, and endospore forming Bacteria found in soil, water, vegetable matter and some Insects and their larvae, and sometimes found in clinical samples. They produce polysaccharide-degrading enzymes which are used in agriculture, industry and medicine. Some species are known to be able to fix nitrogen (incorporate atmospheric nitrogen into organic compounds which can then be used by other organisms), while others may be involved in infections; Foulbrood, a particularly destructive disease of Honey Bees is caused by a form of Paenibacillus.

In a paper published in the journal New Microbes and New Infections on 22 January 2016, Cheikh Lo and Senthil Sankar of the Faculté de médecine at Aix-Marseille Université, Becaye Fall and Bissoume Sambe-Ba of the Hôpital Principal de Dakar, Oleg Mediannikov of the Faculté de médecine at Aix-Marseille Université and Campus International at Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar, Catherine Robert, also of the Faculté de médecine at Aix-Marseille Université, Ngore Faye of the Laboratoire de Parasitologie générale at Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar, Boubakar Wade, also of the Hôpital Principal de Dakar, Didier Raoult of the Faculté de médecine at Aix-Marseille Université, Campus International at Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar and the Special Infectious Agents Unit at King Abdulaziz University,  Pierre-Edouard Fournier, again of the Faculté de médecine at Aix-Marseille Université and Florence Fenollar of the Faculté de médecine at Aix-Marseille Université and the Campus International at Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar, describe a new species of Paenibacillus from a blood sample taken from a sixteen month old child ar the Hôpital Principal de Dakar in March 2014.

The new species od given the specific name Paenibacillus dakarensis, meaning 'from Dakar'. It was found to be possible to culture the Bacterium on 5% sheep’s blood–enriched Columbia agar at temperatures of between 28 and 37°C, with optimum growth at 37°C. In culture the Bacteria formed small white colonies, which proved to be vulnerable to a variety of anti-biotics. It is unclear what, if any, pathogenic effects the Bacteria had in the patient.

Transmission electron microscopy of Paenibacillus dakarensis strain FF9T. Cells were observed on Tecnai G2 transmission electron microscope operated at 200 keV. Scale bar = 500 nm.

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