 Indonesia raised on Tuesday the alert level for Mount Kelud volcano to the highest level, as residents started fleeing amid signs an eruption could be imminent, officials and a witness said.
| You never used to hear about this sort of thing happening when Indonesia was a bunch of Buddhist and Hindoo kingdoms... |
| ... no tsunamis, either ... |
The number of volcanic earthquakes at Mount Kelud, 90 km (55 miles) southwest of Indonesia's second-largest city Surabaya, had soared to more than 300 in a six-hour period from late morning, the country's top volcano expert said by telephone. "An area 10 km from the crater should be evacuated," said Surono, head of the Centre for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation in Bandung.
The alert level was raised to maximum "based on the seismic activity, deformation, visual observation and the temperature of the crater lake going up", according to the centre's Web site. An estimated 350,000 people live within 10 km of the volcano on Java island, growing coffee, sugar cane, pineapples and papayas on the rich volcanic soil or feeding their cattle on the volcano's slopes. |