Status: 04.12.2021 4:13 p.m.
At least one person died in a volcanic eruption on the Indonesian island of Java. 41 others suffered injuries. Mud and the collapse of a larger bridge made the rescue mission difficult.
The Semeru volcano erupted again on the Indonesian island of Java. The volcano spat out ash and a large cloud of smoke that darkened surrounding villages on the island of Java and drove thousands of residents to flight. Glowing lava flowed up to 800 meters from the crater rim, as announced by the National Civil Protection.
One person died and at least 41 were injured. Two people are still missing, eight miners were trapped in a quarry, said the deputy district chief of Lumajang, Indah Masdar, at a press conference.
Rescue workers bring residents to safety
A video distributed by the civil protection agency showed children and adults running away screaming. When the lava reached the first villages and destroyed a bridge in the Lumajang district in East Java, the authorities dispatched rescue workers to bring local residents to safety.
The deployment of the rescuers is made more difficult by thick mud and the collapse of the bridge between two districts, said the head of the national disaster control. “The mud is so thick that even four-wheel drive vehicles can hardly get through,” he said.
“We are setting up emergency shelters in several places in Lumajang,” said the spokesman for the authorities, Abdul Muhari. A restricted zone has been set up within a five-kilometer radius of the volcano.
The Semeru volcano spits a cloud of ash that is kilometers high.
Image: AFP
Heard a rumble since Friday
Lumajang district chief Thoriqul Haq said a rumble had been heard from the volcano since Friday. “Now it’s dark in the villages,” he told Kompas TV.
The almost 3,700 meter high volcano is the highest mountain on Java and is located in the Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park in the east of Indonesia’s most populous island. He has been increasingly active again since December 2020.
The warning level for the Semeru had remained unchanged at the second-highest level since an eruption in December last year. At that time too, villages were covered with gray ash and thousands of people fled.
Indonesia has around 130 active volcanoes. The Southeast Asian island state is located on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire. Several tectonic plates collide there, so that earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur particularly frequently.