One of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes erupted Sunday, spewing thick columns of ash over a mile in the air at least three times and blanketing villages with debris, but so far, no casualties were reported.
As Republic World reports, Mount Marapi, in Agam district of the province of West Sumatra, is known for sudden eruptions that are difficult to predict because they are not caused by a deep movement of magma, which sets off tremors that register on seismic monitors.
It unleashed hot ash clouds that spread for several miles, covering nearby villages and towns with thick volcanic residue, said Ahmad Rifandi, an official with Indonesia’s Pusat Vulkanologi dan Mitigasi Bencana Geologi – PVMBG (translated to Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Center, in English) at the Marapi monitoring post. It also shot ash columns as high as 2,000 metres (6,560 feet).
Rifandi said the nearly 2,900-metre (9,480-foot) volcano has stayed at the second highest of four alert levels since January, prohibiting climbers and villagers within 3 km (1.8 miles) from the crater’s mouth because of potential lava.
When Marapi last erupted in December 2023, twenty-four climbers were killed and many others were injured when they were caught by its sudden weekend eruption. Two climbing routes in the mountain have been closed since then.
Sunday’s eruption came five months after monsoon rains triggered a landslide of mud and cold lava from Mount Marapi, causing rivers to breach their banks. The deluge tore through mountainside villages and swept away people and dozens of homes, killing 67 people.
“Villagers are still haunted by the flash floods of cold lava as rainy season is coming,” Rifandi said, “But they have learned an important lesson on how to avoid the danger of eruption.” Indonesia, an archipelago of 282 million people, is prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity because it sits along the “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines around the Pacific Ocean.
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