Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency announced Monday that at least 10 people have died as a result of a series of volcanic eruptions on the remote island of Flores.
Ferman Yusuf, an agency official, said that the eruption of Mount Ljutopi Laki Laki around midnight spewed thick, brown ash up to 2,000 meters (6,500 feet) into the air. The hot ash hit several villages and burned homes, including a monastery for Catholic nuns. Luteopi Laki Laki Mountain Observation Center.
He said volcanic material was thrown up to 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) from the crater, covering nearby villages and towns with tons of volcanic debris and forcing residents to flee.
Abdul Mahari, spokesman for the National Disaster Management Agency, said rescuers were still searching for more bodies buried under the collapsed houses. Mohari said all the bodies, including a child, were found within a 4-kilometre (2.4-mile) radius of the crater.
He added that at least 10,000 people were affected by the volcanic eruption in six villages in the Wulangjitang area and four villages in the Il Bora area. Some have fled to their relatives’ homes while the local government prepares schools to use as temporary shelters.
The country’s volcano monitoring agency raised the volcano’s alert status to its highest level and the exclusion zone more than doubled to a 7-kilometre (4.3-mile) radius after midnight on Monday as eruptions became more frequent.
Agusta Palma, head of the St. Gabriel Foundation, which oversees monasteries on the predominantly Catholic island, said that a nun in the village of Hocking had died and another was missing.
Get daily national news
Get the day’s top political, economic and current affairs news, headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.
“Our nuns fled in panic under a shower of volcanic ash in the dark,” Palma said.
Photos and videos circulating on social media showed tons of volcanic debris covering homes up to their roofs in villages like Hocking, where hot volcanic material set homes on fire.
Liutopi Laki-Laki is one of a pair of stratovolcanoes in the East Flores area of East Nusa Tenggara Province, known locally as the Husband Mountain – “Laki-Laki” means man – and the Wife Mountains. Her companion is Lewotobi Perempuan, or woman.
About 6,500 people were evacuated in January after Mount Ljutopi Laki Laki began erupting, spewing thick clouds and forcing the government to close the island’s France Side airport. No injuries or serious damage were reported, but the airport has remained closed since then due to seismic activity.
In a video conference on Monday, Mohamed Wafid, head of the Geology Agency at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, said there was a different character between the January eruption and Monday’s eruption due to magma blockage in the crater, which reduced detectable seismic activity while pressure built.
Wafid said: “The explosions that occurred since Friday were due to the accumulation of hidden energy.”
This is the second volcanic eruption in Indonesia in as many weeks. Mount Marabi in West Sumatra province, one of the country’s most active volcanoes, erupted on October 27, spewing thick plumes of ash at least three times and covering nearby villages with debris, but no casualties were reported.
Liotopi Laki Laki is one of 120 active volcanoes in Indonesia, an archipelago of 280 million people. The country is vulnerable to earthquakes, landslides and volcanic activity because it lies along the “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines around the Pacific Ocean.
—Associated Press writers Ninick Karmini and Edna Tarijan in Jakarta contributed to this report.
& Edition 2024 The Canadian Press
