Indonesia volcano death toll doubles
INDONESIA: Indonesia’s Mount Merapi volcano erupted with
renewed ferocity Friday, killing another 64 people and blanketing the
surrounding area with ash.
Ten days of eruptions have now killed more than 80 people and forced
the evacuation of more than 75,000 people.
Mount Merapi, on the outskirts of Yogyakarta city in Central Java,
began spewing deadly clouds of ash and superheated gas last week.
Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the director of disaster risk reduction at the
National Disaster Mitigation Agency, said the death toll had climbed
significantly in the last 24 hours.
“Because of today’s eruption, we found 64 bodies, so the total death
toll is 83, and another 66 have been injured, so the total number of
injured is 185 people,” he told Reuters.
A column of ash billowed at least four km above the crater of Mount
Merapi as worried authorities evacuated villages within a 20 km radius
of the volcano, said the country’s top vulcanologist, Surono.
“It’s much worse than in the past. We cannot predict its behaviour,”
he said.
A Reuters photographer near the volcano said he saw blackened burn
victims being carried into the Sardjito hospital on Friday morning.
“Their clothes had melted onto their skin,” he said.
The air in Yogykarta is now so thick with ash that motorists must
drive with their headlights on during the day, he said.
“We can’t see anything, it’s very dark. The trees are all white with
ash,” he said. “It’s like it’s raining sand.” Indonesia is also
struggling with the aftermath of a tsunami in the remote Mentawai
islands off Sumatra last week that killed at least 431. Sleman, Friday,
Reuters |