Schoolchildren among 14 killed by Mount Sinabung eruption, search for survivor continues
Fourteen people, including four schoolchildren, were killed on Saturday after they were engulfed in scorching ash clouds spat out by Mount Sinabung. Photo: Y. T. Haryono/Reuters/The Jakarta Globe
KARO, NORTH SUMATRA, Jan 2: Fourteen people, including four schoolchildren, were killed on Saturday after they were engulfed in scorching ash clouds spat out by Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung in its biggest eruption in recent days, officials said.
Dark, searing clouds rolling down the mountain left apocalyptic scenes of ash-covered bodies scattered by a roadside in Sukameriah village, just 2.7 kilometers from the volcano’s crater, an AFP witness who helped with the evacuation said.
Officials fear there could be more fatalities from Saturday’s eruptions, but due to the high potential of lethal heat clouds spewing from the mountain, a search and rescue mission has been grounded, officials said.
“We suspect there are more victims but we cannot recover them because the victims are in the path of the hot [ash] clouds,” said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesman for the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB).
All 14 bodies have been identified. Four of them were high school students on a sightseeing trip to the volcano on the western island of Sumatra, he added.
“The bodies were in a state where, even though their skin did not peel, their faces were swollen and the tongues were sticking out,” an AFP reporter on the ground said.
Three other people — a father and his son who wanted to pay respects at the graves of their relatives, and a man who came to the village to check his long-abandoned house — were also trapped and injured by the deadly clouds, Karo district official Johnson Tarigan told AFP.
He said the three were in the intensive care unit of a local hospital.
Thirty thousand people have been evacuated from the area since the volcano started erupting in September.
But some residents had returned home on Friday following advise from the Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation that houses outside the five-kilometer radius from the mountain were safe.
The volcano erupted again on Saturday morning, sending hot rocks and ash up 2,000 meters into the air, blanketing the surrounding countryside with grey dust, said volcanologist Kristianto.
Sukameriah village is located in the red zone, where human activities are strictly banned, but locals often trespassed the restricted area to check on their houses and belongings as well as their crops, officials said.
Nugroho said the evacuation will resume on Sunday.
Mount Sinabung is one of 129 active volcanoes in Indonesia that straddle major tectonic fault lines, known as the Pacific Ring of Fire.
It had been quiet for around 400 years until it rumbled back to life in 2010, and again in September last year.
In August 2013, five people were killed and hundreds evacuated when a volcano on a small island in East Nusa Tenggara erupted.
The country’s most active volcano, Mount Merapi in central Java, killed more than 350 people in a series of eruptions in 2010.
Search continues
Relatives mourn for the Sinabung volcanic eruption victims at a hospital in Kabanjahe, Karo, North Sumatra. Photo: Dedi Sahputra/EPA/The Jakarta Globe
Indonesian rescuers will search through thick ash Sunday hoping to find survivors after Mount Sinabung volcano erupted engulfing victims in scorching clouds, killing 14 people including four high-school students.
The volcano on the western island of Sumatra started erupting in September but on Saturday spewed hot rocks and ash 2,000 meters into the air, blanketing the surrounding countryside with grey dust.
About 100 rescuers, including from the military and police, armed with chainsaws and oxygen apparatus will carry out the difficult search through up to 30-centimeter thick ash in Sukameriah village — just 2.7 kilometers from the volcano’s crater, disaster and local officials said.
“We don’t know how many people are missing but rescuers today will resume evacuation and look for anyone still trapped,” National Disaster Management Agency official Tri Budiarto told AFP.
“They will be wearing facemasks and use chainsaws to cut any fallen branches along the way,” he added.
Weather conditions may also affect search operations, officials warned.
“It’s cloudy today so we worry that it might rain,” Karo district spokesman Robert Peranginangin. “If it rains, the area will be muddy and hard to walk, so we will have to stop search and rescue,” he added.
Lethal heat clouds cascaded down the volcano after Saturday’s deadly eruption, killing 14 people — mainly local tourists — including four high school students on a sightseeing trip.
Three other people are being treated for serious burns at a local hospital.
Officials are also putting up more signs to warn people not to enter the area, officials said.
Sukameriah village is located in the “red zone” around the volcano, where human activities are strictly banned, Budiarto said.
“It’s very dangerous and completely out of bounds. But many of the tourists still secretly went to the area to take photographs,” he added.
Mount Sinabung is one of 129 active volcanoes in Indonesia that straddle major tectonic fault lines, known as the Pacific Ring of Fire.
The country’s most active volcano, Mount Merapi in Central Java, killed more than 350 people in a series of eruptions in 2010.
