 More than 25,000 panicked residents have been evacuated from the slopes of a volcano on Indonesia's Sumatra island and officials raised the alert level Wednesday as the mountain's activity intensified. The heightened rumbling of Mount Talang has coincided with a string of moderate earthquakes on Sumatra, which is still recovering from a massive Dec. 26 quake and tsunami that killed nearly 130,000 people in Aceh province to the north. "The status of Mount Talang is now at top alert," Surono, a vulcanologist from the Directorate of Vulcanology and Geophysics in the Java city of Bandung, told Reuters. Local officials said 26,000 people had been evacuated from the slopes and areas around the 2,690 meter (9,825 ft) volcano in West Sumatra province, adding that number was likely to rise. |