Indonesia's Merapi roars back to life, residents flee

JAKARTA: Indonesia's Mount Merapi roared back to life Thursday, sending its largest clouds of hot gas and ash down its slopes yet and sparking panic among residents already jittery from a deadly earthquake that hit last month.

Television footage showed stunning clouds spewing from the volcano's crater against a clear blue sky just after 9:00 am (0200 GMT). People rushed to evacuation points lower down the slopes, fearful they would be engulfed.

The vulcanology office in Yogyakarta, 30 kilometres (18) kilometres south of Merapi, said the clouds reached almost five kilometres down the southeastern slope but did not reach any inhabited areas.

The village nearest the peak to the southeast, Kinahrejo, lies about 6.5 kilometres down the slope.

"There was some panic, as people near Kaliadem saw the huge clouds, especially because it has been a long time since such clouds headed this way," Misman, a local official in Umbulharjo village, told AFP referring to another hamlet seven kilometres from the peak.

Metro TV showed residents, including weeping women carrying their infants, waiting for evacuation by trucks and cars provided by the district governments at designated spots in the danger zone.

The shots, taken by its cameraman with other reporters fleeing on board a speeding car, also showed several villagers running or riding motorcycles down the main road.

Ratdomo, a senior geologist at the office, said on ElShinta radio that the cloud was "not extraordinary. It has already happened several times.

"The only thing is that it happened in the morning when the sky was clear so that everyone could see it," he said. "The gist is that since Merapi is still on red alert status, the production of such heatclouds is only normal."

The volcano on densely-populated Java island was put on its highest alert on May 13, meaning it was considered poised to erupt. Its activity has been erratic since then but escalated again this week.

In the first six hours of Thursday, Merapi sent 19 other clouds to the southwest and southeast, reaching up to four and a half kilometres.

The clouds, known technically as nuees ardentes but locally as "shaggy goats", consist of volcanic gases, ash and dust.

They can reach temperatures of up to 500 degrees Celsius (930 degrees Fahrenheit) and speeds of hundreds of kilometres per hour.

Thirty-three lava flows also spewed from the crater in the first six hours of Thursday, streaming two kilometres down Merapi's flanks, the office said.

Meanwhile officials said just over 18,000 people had left their homes on the higher slopes of the volcano by early Thursday.

Meanwhile residents of the central Philippines braced Thursday for possible volcanic eruptions after two mountains spewed giant showers of ash over the past week, experts said.

Two steam explosions occurred on Bulusan on the Bicol peninsula on the southern tip of Luzon island late Wednesday and early Thursday, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said.

The first blast late Wednesday generated a two-kilometer-high (1.2-mile-high) volcanic cloud that carpeted areas to the north and northwest including Sorsogon city, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) away, with ash, said institute director Renato Solidum.

Jakarta, Manila, Thursday AFP