Thousands ignore Indonesia volcano warnings
Armed police ordered villagers off the slopes of one of Indonesia’s deadliest volcanoes fearing an imminent eruption today, but thousands refused to leave over concern for crops and livestock.
Scientists raised the alert at Mount Kelud to the highest level earlier this week, pointing to sharply rising temperatures in the lake of its crater and violent rumbling beneath.
There was an hour-long spike in activity yesterday when gas or magma tried to break through the crater lake, said Surono, a government volcanologist who goes by only one name, but the volcano quickly stabilised and showed no signs of dramatic change this today.
The risk of eruption remained extremely high, however, he said, noting the crater lake had turned from turquoise to white as sulfur levels increased.
“It’s difficult to say when it will go off with all this fluctuating activity, but it could be anytime now,” he said, noting similar patterns emerged days before the last major eruption in 1990, when 34 people were killed and nearly 100 others injured.
In 1919, a much more powerful explosion of the volcano on densely populated Java island destroyed dozens of villages and killed at least 5,160 people.
“I’m afraid pressure behind the magma will build up again and that next time it will explode,” Surono said.
Authorities have ordered 116,000 people living along Mount Kelud’s fertile slopes to leave in recent days.
Nearly 13,000 of the 40,000 villagers within the volcano’s danger zone insisted on staying, however, said Palal Ali Santoso, head of volcano relief operations.
Police forced some to evacuate at gunpoint and prevented others from returning after they tried to attend to their crops and animals, evacuees said.
“If we didn’t force them – in this case with a showing of firearms – the villagers would not budge,” said police chief Col Tjuk Basuki, adding that residents have been repeatedly warned about the danger. “We had no choice but to do this for their safety.”
Among those refusing to leave was Kadijo, an 80-year-old man who survived the last big blast 17 years ago. He recalled running under a heavy rain of ash and sand and then climbing a tree to escape the scalding magma flowing below.
“I know this mountain well,” he said, adding he and about 60 others from his village insisted on staying because they did not believe it was ready to erupt. “I was born here and I will die here.”
Sally Kuhn Sennert, a volcanologist with the US Geological Survey and the Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program, said rising temperatures in the crater lake, an increase in the size and intensity of gas plumes, and a change in the ground tilt – all currently observed at Mount Kelud – indicate there might be an eruption, but they do not guarantee one.
“The temperature has fluctuated in the past without an eruption,” she said, adding, however, the 5,679ft mountain has also erupted before without warning so authorities were correct in taking precautions.
