A tropical-island volcano in northeastern Indonesia exploded in a major eruption on Thursday, hurling stones and spewing smoke, and warnings of further blasts kept thousands of villagers away from their homes on the mountain’s slopes.
Volcanologists have expected a big eruption of Mount Awu on Sangihe Island since last week, and the nearly 12 000 people living around the mountain have been evacuated to a nearby town. There were no reports of injuries in Thursday’s blast.
”Mount Awu has already begun to explode with the major eruption on Thursday morning,” said Syamsul Rizal, a volcanologist dispatched to the island. ”We cannot predict when it will end since many smaller blasts and aftershocks continue to occur.”
It was the second volcanic eruption in Indonesia this week. On Tuesday, two hikers were killed by an eruption of Mount Bromo, a volcano popular with tourists on the eastern end of Java island.
Thursday’s explosion at Mount Awu, about 2 160km northeast of Jakarta, threw up rocks near the volcano’s crater and spewed smoke about 3km into the air, but there was no lava flow, Rizal said.
It was followed by several smaller blasts and aftershocks, and thick black smoke billowed from the crater for much of the day, witnesses said.
The island’s airport was closed and authorities blocked roads leading to the mountain.
Authorities in recent days evacuated people living in a radius of 7km around Mount Awu. Nearly 12 000 people are being housed in the nearby town of Tahuna, in government offices and other public buildings.
”We are afraid because the volcano is now active and we live so close to it,” refugee Bob Papengkeng said from a government meeting house in the town where families slept on the floor.
Rizal said that because of the timely evacuation, nobody was hurt in Thursday’s blast.
A light coat of ash from the volcano — which lies just south of the Philippines’ Mindanao Island — has covered local beaches and villages.
In August 1966, the 1 320m volcano erupted, killing 40 people. It last erupted in October 1992.
Tuesday’s eruption on Mount Bromo also injured seven people who were hit by a shower of hot rocks expelled by the volcano, which also sent a plume of smoke 3km into the air, officials said.
One of the dead was a Singaporean citizen and the other a local tourist, police said. Rescuers were still searching for three vendors believed to have been on the mountain at the time of the eruption. — Sapa-AP