Jakarta (EFE).- Indonesian reported Thursday that nearly 1,000 people, including more than 100 climbers, were evacuated after the eruption of Mount Semeru on the island of Java a day ago.
The volcano remained active and the volcanology department raised Semeru’s alert status to level IV, the highest on Indonesia’s scale, following a series of eruptions that sent pyroclastic flows down the mountain’s slopes.
The volcano, one of the most active in the Indonesian archipelago, has erupted more than 10 times in the past 24 hours, spewing massive ash clouds and sending lava and rocks cascading as far as 15 km down its slopes, according to the agency.
Under the highest alert level, authorities established an exclusion zone with an 8-km radius around the crater.
The eruptions were concentrated on the southeast face of the volcano, an area that experienced a similar episode in 2021.
As a result, a group of climbers ascending from the northern route was not directly at risk.
Due to the intensified activity, 137 climbers took shelter in an area known as Ranu Kumbolo, about 8 km from the crater, where they spent the night before being evacuated.
Pyroclastic flows are dangerous avalanches of gas, ash, and volcanic rock fragments that travel at high speed down a volcano’s slopes.
In December 2021, a similar eruption killed more than 50 people living near Semeru.
On Thursday, several villages on the mountain’s slopes and roads in the surrounding area were blanketed in ash as residents gathered their belongings to temporarily leave their homes.
Indonesia is home to more than 400 volcanoes, at least 129 of which remain active and 65 classified as hazardous.
The archipelago suffered the deadly eruption of Mount Merapi on the island of Sumatra in December 2023, which killed 23 people.
In May this year, also near Merapi, heavy rains washed volcanic material into residential areas, leaving at least 60 people dead. EFE
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