Indonesia’s Mount Merapi erupted on Saturday, spilling gas clouds and lava, forcing a halt to tourism and mining on the slopes of the country’s most active volcano.
Merapi, on the densely populated island of Java, unleashed clouds of hot ash and a mixture of rock, lava and gas that travelled up to seven kilometres down its slopes. A column of hot gas rose 100 metres into the air, National Disaster Management Agency spokesman Abdul Muhari said.
The eruption throughout the day blocked out the sun and blanketed villages with ash. No casualties were reported.
It was Merapi’s biggest lava flow since authorities raised the alert level to the second-highest in November 2020, said Hanik Humaida, the head of Yogyakarta’s Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Centre.
She said residents living on Merapi’s slopes were advised to stay at least 7km from the crater’s mouth and to be aware of the danger posed by lava.
Tourism and mining activities were halted.
The 2,968-metre mountain is about 30km from Yogyakarta, an ancient centre of Javanese culture and the seat of royal dynasties. About a quarter of a million people live within 10km of the volcano.
Merapi is the most active of more than 120 active volcanoes in Indonesia and has repeatedly erupted recently. Its last major eruption, in 2010, killed 347 people and displaced 20,000 villagers.
Indonesia, an archipelago of 270 million people, is prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity because it sits along the Ring of Fire, a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines around the Pacific Ocean.
An eruption in December 2021 of Mount Semeru, the highest volcano on Java island, killed 48 people and left 36 unaccounted for.
