TANAH KARO, Indonesia An Indonesian volcano sent a new, powerful burst of hot ash high into the air early Friday, violently shaking homes and trees along the slopes and sending panicked villagers scurrying back to safety.
"This was a big one" said 37-year-old Anto Sembiring, who fled his coffee shop not far from the craters mouth, joining hundreds of others gathered near Mount Sinabungs base. "It shot up at least 3,000 meters yards."
The air was thick with the smell of sulfur and visibility was limited to just a few yards meters.
Mount Sinabung erupted for the first time in four centuries on Sunday and Monday, catching many scientists off guard and forcing at least 30,000 people living along its fertile slopes in North Sumatra province to be evacuated.
In recent days, as the mountain quieted, many had returned home to tend to their dust-covered crops and to reopen small businesses, despite warnings by vulcanologists that the alert level was still high.
The eruption Friday, which started at around 4:45 a.m., as many people were sleeping, appeared to be the strongest yet, said Surono, who heads the nations volcano alert center, adding that the tremor could be felt five miles eight kilometers away.
"Everything around us was shaking," said Sembiring, the coffee shop owner, adding that he and many others ignored vulcanologists warnings ahead of the blast that activity was increasing.
"When it blew, we all ran as fast as we could," he said. "Everyone was panicking."
Mount Sinabung last erupted in 1600, and government vulcanologists acknowledged they had made no efforts before the mountain started rumbling last week to sample gases or look out for rising magma or other signs of seismic activity.
They were too busy with more than 129 active volcanoes in Indonesia, a seismically charged region because of its location on the so-called "Ring of Fire" � a series of fault lines stretching from the Western Hemisphere through Japan and Southeast Asia.
They said from now on they will be watching it very closely.
There are fears that current activity could foreshadow a much more destructive explosion in a few weeks or months, though it is possible, too, that the mountain will go back to sleep after letting off steam.
The archipelagic nation has recorded some of the largest eruptions in history.
The 1815 explosion of Mount Tambora buried the inhabitants of Sumbawa Island under searing ash, gas and rock, killing an estimated 88,000 people.
The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa could be heard 2,000 miles 3,200 kilometers away and blackened skies region-wide for months. At least 36,000 people were killed in the blast and the tsunami that followed.
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Associated Press Writer Niniek Karmini contributed to this report from Jakarta.
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