Indonesian Volcano Hits People, Farms & Air Travel

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Worsening eruptions from Indonesia's Merapi volcano killed at least 39 people, wiped out farmlands for the next 10 years, and forced airlines to cancel or divert flights along a volcano-studded "Ring of Fire" in Southeast Asia's densely populated equatorial zone.

People continued to flee on foot, in vehicles and by motorcycles, including many who wore white cotton face masks to protect against the 10,000-foot-high toxic gray plumes which rose like misshapen mushroom clouds into the sky.

The volcano's molten lava seared the earth, entombing people, animals and crops, and making it impossible to reclaim farmland on its southern slopes.

"What we can consider for now is that those farming fields would not be able to be planted with crops for the next ten years," said Yogyakarta's Governor Sultan Hamengkubuwono.

"So, from where can these people eat?" he asked, suggesting they be permanently relocated, though it was unclear how many thousands of people would be unable to return to the stricken zone.

Wilting trees and other vegetation were cloaked in heavy gray dust, which also covered buildings, cars, and anything else outdoors near the volcano, as if a gray-colored blizzard had blown through the tropical area.

Pointing skyward on central Java island, midway between Singapore and northwest Australia, the 9,616-foot-tall volcano killed 1,370 people in 1930, during its biggest recorded eruption.

In 1994, its fiery cone snuffed the lives of 66 villagers. In 2006, two people perished from Mount Merapi's spewed debris.

The volcano's most recent activity began on October 26 and quickly increased in ferocity with the worst eruptions on Wednesday (November 3) belching sulphurous smoke, extremely hot ash, and huge rocks -- described by geologists as a pyroclastic flow.

The incandescent cloud of choking, super-heated gas and burning debris fell onto terrified villagers, who were living on Merapi's fertile slopes despite the well-known dangers to their families, crops, cattle and other farm animals.

The death toll along the volcano's southern slopes stood at 39 people on Wednesday (November 3), the Jakarta Post reported.

The relatively young volcano, on Java island, threatens one of the world's most densely populated areas, 500 miles southeast of Indonesia's capital Jakarta.

Merapi is also one of Indonesia's most active volcanoes, and peaks menacingly just 17 miles north of Yogyakarta -- a major city and site of the Merapi Volcano Observatory.

More than 47,000 other people who dwell on Merapi's southern slopes have now become "internally displaced people," the Health Ministry said.

Those frightened men, women and children are now huddling in makeshift temporary shelters.

"President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was welcomed by another eruption at Mount Merapi on Wednesday (November 3) morning when he was about to visit a shelter site for refugees in Pakem, Sleman, and Yogyakarta," the Jakarta Post said, describing an eruption at 8:20 a.m. local time.

The newest, stronger blasts from the volcano on Wednesday (November 3) surprised rescuers, prompting a hurried relocation of the shelters from their earlier position six miles from the volcano to a safer distance nine miles from the cone, officials said.

No one knows how many more times Merapi will erupt in the coming days, and whether it will increase its lava flow, or settle, cool and harden.

Deadly debris tumbled into the slope's existing rivers, and crushed villagers' homes which nestled in and near the river valleys -- a route similar to the volcano's killer flow in 1994.

Though some pyroclastic sediment is expected to condense along the volcano's rivers, it may remain loose and volatile elsewhere along the crater for some time, creating the danger of a cold, thick, destructively crushing flow of so-called lahar mud, if rain hits the slopes and liquefies the heavy sludge.

During the past several years, Indonesian authorities installed dam-like structures on Mount Merapi to control cold lahar onslaughts, but it was too early to know if the blockades would be breeched by the latest eruptions, or by a feared collapse of the steep-sided volcano's summit lava dome.

Aviation monitors, air-traffic controllers, pilots and others were meanwhile determining how to re-route planes which usually pass over or near central Java island, and also calculating how much extra fuel would be required.

Some regional flights to and from Yogyakarta were temporarily cancelled or re-routed, while others were advised to fly at a minimum altitude of 11,000 feet.

Volcanologists are urgently measuring Merapi's volcanic ash emissions, the height of its ash plume, how much debris is being hurled into the atmosphere, and the size of the "damage radius" on the ground.

The U.S. Department of the Interior's U.S. Geological Survey is also eyeing Merapi's billowing, barren cone, which it can examine by satellite imagery.

Mount Merapi, or "Mountain of Fire," is a stratovolcano, which is created from several alternate layers of lava and ash.

Volcano-studded Indonesia includes a line of more than 13,000 islands, which form part of an international Pacific Ring of Fire where eruptions are possible.

Muslim-majority Indonesia displays at least 76 historically active volcanoes -- the largest number in any country -- which have unleashed more than 1,100 eruptions, according to the Smithsonian Institution's Volcanoes of the World publication.

Indonesia has also suffered the highest number of eruptions that have resulted in fatalities, damage to arable land, mudflows, tsunamis, domes, and pyroclastic flows, it said.

Four-fifths of Indonesia's volcanoes are known to have erupted during the 20th century.

Richard S Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist who has reported news from Asia since 1978. He is co-author of "Hello My Big Big Honey!", a non-fiction book of investigative journalism. His web page is
http://www.asia-correspondent.110mb.com

(Copyright 2010 Richard S Ehrlich)

© Scoop Media