MOUNT MERAPI, Indonesia: Searing gas avalanched down an Indonesian volcano with a thunderous roar, torching houses and trees and incinerating villagers as they fled Mount Merapi’s worst eruption in a century. Scores of bodies found Friday raised the death toll to 122.
The injured — with clothes, blankets and even mattresses fused to their skin by the 1,400 degree Fahrenheit (750 degree Celsius) heat — were carried away on stretchers following the first big explosion just before midnight.
All Friday, Merapi shot towering plumes of ash that dusted the windshields of cars 300 miles (480 kilometers) away.
Bursts of hot clouds occasionally interrupted aid efforts, with rescuers screaming “Watch out! Hot cloud!” The intensifying eruptions have baffled scientists who have monitored the mountain for years and left them uncertain what to expect. Dozens of explosions that followed Merapi’s initial blast Oct. 26 had been predicted to ease pressure behind a magma dome.
The danger zone where residents have been ordered to flee has now been expanded to 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the crater.
Friday’s explosion — said by volcanologists to be the biggest since the 1870s — hit hardest in Bronggang, a village nine miles (15 kilometers) from the crater.
Soldiers joined the rescue operations, pulling at least 78 bodies from homes and streets blanketed by ash up to one foot (30 centimeters) deep.
Crumpled roofs, charred carcasses of cattle and broken chairs — all layered in white soot — dotted the smoldering landscape.
The volcano, in the heart of densely populated Java island, has erupted scores of times in the past, killing more than 1,500 people in the last century alone. But tens of thousands of people live on its rolling slopes, drawn to soil made fertile by lava and volcanic debris.
“The heat surrounded us and there was white smoke everywhere,” said Niti Raharjo, 47, who was thrown from his motorbike along with his 19-year-old son while trying to flee.
“I saw people running, screaming in the dark, women so scared they fell unconscious,” he said from a hospital where they were both being treated for burns.
“There was an explosion that sounded like it was from a war ... and it got worse, the ash and debris raining down”. The greatest danger posed by Merapi has always been pyroclastic flows — like those that roared down the southern slopes at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour (100 kilometers per hour).
With bodies found in front of houses and in streets, it appeared that many of the villagers died from the searing gas while trying to escape, said Col. Tjiptono, a deputy police chief.
More than 150 injured people — with burns, respiratory problems, broken bones and cuts — waited to be treated at the tiny Sardjito hospital, where the bodies piled up in the morgue, and two other hospitals.
Arab News
