Indonesia's Marapi volcano erupts, spewing ash and hot clouds

Padang, Indonesia — 

One of Indonesia’s astir progressive volcanoes erupted Sunday, spewing heavy columns of ash astatine slightest 3 times and blanketing villages with debris, but nary casualties were reported.

Mount Marapi, successful Agam territory of the state of West Sumatra, is known for abrupt eruptions that are hard to foretell due to the fact that they are not caused by a heavy question of magma, which sets disconnected tremors that registry connected seismic monitors.

It unleashed blistery ash clouds that dispersed for respective kilometers, covering adjacent villages and towns with heavy volcanic residue, said Ahmad Rifandi, an authoritative with Indonesia’s Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Center astatine the Marapi monitoring post. It besides changeable ash columns arsenic precocious arsenic 2,000 meters.

Rifandi said the astir 2,900-meter volcano has stayed astatine the 2nd highest of 4 alert levels since January, prohibiting climbers and villagers wrong 3 kilometers from the crater’s rima due to the fact that of imaginable lava.

Marapi erupted successful December 2023, sidesplitting 24 climbers and injuring respective others who were caught by its abrupt play eruption. Two climbing routes successful the upland person been closed since then.

Sunday’s eruption came 5 months aft monsoon rains triggered a landslide of mud and acold lava from Mount Marapi, causing rivers to breach their banks. The deluge tore done mountainside villages and swept distant radical and dozens of homes, sidesplitting 67 people.

“Villagers are inactive haunted by the flash floods of acold lava arsenic rainy play is coming,” Rifandi said, “But they person learned an important acquisition connected however to debar the information of eruption.”

Indonesia, an archipelago of 282 cardinal people, is prone to earthquakes and volcanic enactment due to the fact that it sits on the “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped bid of seismic responsibility lines astir the Pacific Ocean.