Feb. 2, 2014 7:29 a.m. ET
JAKARTA, Indonesia—More than a dozen tourists and villagers were killed after venturing too close to Indonesia's most active volcano this weekend, prompting authorities to tighten a restricted-entry zone around the mountain on Sumatra island.
At least 15 people, mostly high-school students, were killed near an evacuated village when Mount Sinabung erupted Saturday, officials said. Sinabung has been erupting daily for the past three months, but these were the first deaths directly related to the volcanic activity.
The national disaster-mitigation agency said the students and several villagers were struck by a pyroclastic flow, a superheated cloud of ash and gases that can barrel down a mountain side at high speeds during an ash eruption.
The flow gushed down the mountain side at about 100 kilometers an hour with a temperature of around 700 degrees Celsius, the agency said.
The students, who had ventured near a village about three kilometers southeast of the volcano, had been trying to get a better view of the eruption, said agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, adding that the students weren't on an organized school trip.
Sinabung's southeastern flank has been site of the majority of the pyroclastic flows emanating from the crater since the round of eruptions began in November.
Eruptions have forced the evacuation of some 30,000—largely small farmers—on northern Sumatra island, blanketing the highlands countryside in gray ash that has destroyed millions of dollars of cash crops. More than 10,000 people who had evacuated from villages just beyond the mandatory evacuation zone—which runs five kilometers from the peak in most places—chose to return home last week.
Up to now, entry into the evacuation zone has been permitted but discouraged by local authorities.
But Jhonson Tarigan, spokesman for the local relief effort, said Sunday police and military increased their patrol personnel to 200 from 75 after the deaths and would now declare the evacuation zone completely off limits.
"Starting today, we installed road blocks at access road to the danger zone," he said. "Now nobody will be allowed to enter the danger zone."
He also said some of the new personnel would come from areas beyond Kabanjahe, the headquarters for a district of several hundred thousand people around the volcano.
"Previously the patrolling officers knew the villagers, so they were less stern in stopping the them" from entering, he said.
Tourist trips to the volcano have been a common sight in recent months, often led by guides who used to take people hiking to the top of the nearly 2,500-meter peak.
Erwin Sinaga, a local guide, said he takes groups into the evacuation zone two to three times a week. On Sunday, he was planning to take travelers from the U.S. and Taiwan as close as four kilometers on the roads at the base of the mountain, until the route was closed by authorities. He found another vantage point at seven kilometers, he said.
The fatalities occurred a day after authorities allowed some 13,800 people to go back to their villages outside the five-kilometer danger zone. Many had fled in December and January amid ash fall and an uptick in pyroclastic flows further up the mountain.
Thousands of villagers have been living for months in mosques, churches and event halls in and around Kabanjahe, the district headquarters.
No one precisely knows Sinabung's capabilities. Scientists have been studying the mountain in earnest only since 2010, when it briefly erupted for the first time in centuries. That gave volcanologists time to set up seismic-monitoring tools and to study 2,000 years of volcanic deposits, all of which is informing current evacuation maps.
On Sunday, Hendrasto, the head of the government volcano agency who, like many Indonesians, goes by one name, said Sinabung's activity remains unchanged.
"The eruptions are not expected to stop in the near future," he said.
For locals living at a safe distance from the volcano, Sinabung has offered a nightly diversion for months. On a recent evening in Kabanjahe, about 200 locals braved the highlands chill to stand in a field about 13 kilometers from the summit, looking up at the mountain for occasional burst of lava. Vendors sold cheap noodle soup to ward off the chill.
A quiet murmur went up in the crowd when a fireball flew silently down the side of the volcano, at that distance little more than a drop of red on a black hillside.
"Wait awhile," one of onlookers said. "It'll happen again, bigger."
Write to I Made Sentana at i-made.sentana@wsj.com and Ben Otto at ben.otto@wsj.com
Put the internet to work for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment