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Villagers Evacuated As Indonesian Volcano Spews Lava
JAKARTA, Feb 10 (News Agencies) - Authorities evacuated hundreds of villagers and sounded the "imminent eruption" alert Saturday as Indonesia's Mount Merapi belched streams of hot lava and clouds of super-heated steam before dawn.
By evening, some 12,000 people from nine villages at the foot of the volcano had massed at evacuation points at village halls, and schools, which had been ordered closed, the state Anatara news agency said.
Trucks and ambulances were standing by under drenching rain, Antara quoted a Dukun sub-district administrative affairs chief as saying.
There were no reports of injuries among the villagers who live on the slopes and the banks of rivers running near the 2,914-metre (9,616-feet) volcano, which towers over the central plain of East Java.
Ash rain was reported falling on cities as far as 100 kilometers (62 miles) to the east, scientists said.
A vulcanologist named Sunarto, speaking from the Kaliurang outpost on the southwest slope of Merapi, said that volcanic activity started between 3:00 am and 4:00 am and lasted about three hours before decreasing markedly in intensity at around 7:00 am (2400 GMT).
By midday, many of the first evacuees had returned home, police said.
But in the evening between 5:00 pm and 5:20 pm the volcano displayed another bout of intense activity, before again falling calm, another vulcanologist named Tanut said from Kaliurang.
Though violent, Sunarto said Merapi's rumblings could not be considered an eruption, though the potential for increased activity was "still high".
"We would only classify it as an eruption if the hot clouds billowing from the dome go straight up high into the sky, and are accompanied by a huge explosion," he said.
"What's happening right now is just an outpouring, not an explosion, because the pressure [from deep under the crater] is less powerful."
Heat clouds killed at least 60 people and forced more than 6,000 to evacuate to safer ground when Merapi last erupted in 1994. Since 1930, Merapi eruptions have killed around 1,300 people.
Sunarto said a new lava dome - christened Dome 2001 - that has built up inside the old crater in the past two weeks now contained some one million cubic feet of molten rocks and sand.
"We have to keep an eye on the landslide possibility," he said.
He said that lava and hot steam - which can reach temperatures of 900 degrees Celsius (1,652 degrees Fahrenheit) - had rolled down the slopes.
"When that happened we raised the alert level to the top 'Awas Merapi' [Beware Merapi] - meaning evacuate," he said.
"There were evacuations in the Lamat village, particularly of residents who live on the slopes of the volcano, only nine kilometers from the top," he said, but was unable to give the total number who had already evacuated.
"Evacuation also took place for residents along the Sat River, where it is believed more than 100 people are living," he said.
"We evacuated dozens of people living along the banks of the Urang, Lamat, and Gerinjing rivers, but after the rumbling died down they went back to their homes," said an assistant police commissioner named Syafrisal, speaking in Magelang, some 30 kilometers to the west of the volcano.
Ash rain was reported falling on the cities of Wonogiri, 100 kilometers from the mountain, Solo, 60 kilometers away, Sukoharjo, Klaten and Boyolali, as well as Sleman, just north of the major city of Yogyakarta.
Health officials said Tuesday they had distributed thousands of masks to residents in three main districts below the volcano.
The masks were needed by some 21,000 residents of Selo subdistrict in Boyolali, a town with population of 965,000.
Until Saturday, Merapi's alert status had remained unchanged since it was raised to the second highest "be prepared" level on January 10th amid rising volcanic activity.
The Indonesian vulcanology office recognizes four danger levels for a volcano - normal, beware, be prepared and alert - the last being the signal for an imminent eruption.
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