Volcanic Eruption in Indonesia Claims 10 Lives, Forces Mass Evacuation

Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki in eastern Indonesia started a three day eruption last night; as many as 10 people are known to have been killed and several villages around the volcano destroyed. The 1,703-meter twin volcano situated on one of Indonesia’s famous tourist islands, Flores, started the eruption just a little before midnight and thereby invoked the evacuation process. The spokesman of the country’s disaster mitigation agency, Abdul Muhari, said the death toll was confirmed as the authorities elevated the alert level of the volcano and created a seven-kilometer no-entry zone around the crater.

Volcanic eruption led to the disaster and several villages was adversely affected and destroyed. Wooden dwellings were set alight by debris, the earth was scarred with craters formed by impact of the molten stones. The volcano also showed highly active features marked by multiple eruptions during the period of mid-night and early morning, which produced ash columns of about 2000 meters. People were confined to their shelters in group structures due to the loss of their houses to volcanic stones.

Volcanoes are common in Indonesia, which is situated in the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” and several recent eruptions have been fatal. The country has seen similar misfortunes in December, when eruption of Mount Marapi took 24 victims, most of them students of one of the universities. The next disaster occurred in may the same year when rain flooded residential areas with volcanic material from Marapi wasting over sixty lives and with many people left homeless.