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Farmers flee as world's deadliest volcano rumbles
Associated Press | Tue, 09/20/2011 9:33 AM
Bold farmers in Indonesia routinely ignore orders to evacuate the slopes of live volcanoes, but those living on Tambora took no chances when history's deadliest mountain rumbled ominously this month.
Villagers like Hasanuddin Sanusi have heard since they were young how the mountain they call home once blew apart in the largest eruption ever recorded - an 1815 event widely forgotten outside their region - killing 90,000 people and blackening skies on the other side of the globe.
...
The April 1815 eruption of Tambora left a crater 7 miles (11 kilometers) wide and half a mile (1 kilometer) deep, spewing an estimated 400 million tons of sulfuric gases into the atmosphere and leading to "the year without summer" in the U.S. and Europe.
It was several times more powerful than Indonesia's much better-known Krakatoa blast of 1883 - history's second deadliest. But it doesn't share the same international renown, because the only way news spread across the oceans at the time was by slowboat, said Tambora researcher Indyo Pratomo.
...
Gede Suantika of the government's Center for Volcanology said activity first picked up in April, with the volcanic quakes jumping from less than five a month to more than 200.
"It also started spewing ash and smoke into the air, sometimes as high as 1,400 meters (4,600 feet)," he said. "That's something I've never seen it do before."
Authorities raised the alert to the second-highest level two weeks ago, but said only villagers within 2 miles (3 kilometers) from the crater needed to evacuate.
Full text:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/09/20/farmers-flee-worlds-deadliest-volcano-rumbles.html
Associated Press | Tue, 09/20/2011 9:33 AM
Bold farmers in Indonesia routinely ignore orders to evacuate the slopes of live volcanoes, but those living on Tambora took no chances when history's deadliest mountain rumbled ominously this month.
Villagers like Hasanuddin Sanusi have heard since they were young how the mountain they call home once blew apart in the largest eruption ever recorded - an 1815 event widely forgotten outside their region - killing 90,000 people and blackening skies on the other side of the globe.
...
The April 1815 eruption of Tambora left a crater 7 miles (11 kilometers) wide and half a mile (1 kilometer) deep, spewing an estimated 400 million tons of sulfuric gases into the atmosphere and leading to "the year without summer" in the U.S. and Europe.
It was several times more powerful than Indonesia's much better-known Krakatoa blast of 1883 - history's second deadliest. But it doesn't share the same international renown, because the only way news spread across the oceans at the time was by slowboat, said Tambora researcher Indyo Pratomo.
...
Gede Suantika of the government's Center for Volcanology said activity first picked up in April, with the volcanic quakes jumping from less than five a month to more than 200.
"It also started spewing ash and smoke into the air, sometimes as high as 1,400 meters (4,600 feet)," he said. "That's something I've never seen it do before."
Authorities raised the alert to the second-highest level two weeks ago, but said only villagers within 2 miles (3 kilometers) from the crater needed to evacuate.
Full text:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/09/20/farmers-flee-worlds-deadliest-volcano-rumbles.html
