Indonesian rescuers raced to evacuate hundreds of people around Mount Merapi in central Java as they extended the minimum safety distance from the volcano following its biggest eruption since the Oct. 26 blast.
The safety distance has extended to 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) from 10 kilometers, with around 3,000 people still trapped inside the new danger zone, Oka Hamid, a spokesman at Red Cross Indonesia’s Yogyakarta branch said. Heavy rain and fog obscure the direction the hot ash cloud is moving, making it difficult to identify which area to evacuate first, he said.
“We have to work fast,” Hamid said by telephone today. “We’re using trucks, motorcycles, anything that can move people to a safer distance.” Indonesian soldiers are helping with the evacuation, he said.
Merapi, which means mountain of fire, may release clouds of hot ash for about two months, Subandriyo, an official at the country’s Volcanology and Geology Disaster Mitigation Center, said. The death toll from the eruptions since Oct. 26 reached 42, Agam Ferdhatama, an official the National Disaster Management Agency said today.
Indonesia is battling to recover from two disasters that struck the Southeast Asian nation within a day apart of each other. On Mentawai Islands off the west coast of Sumatra, relief workers are focusing on nursing and providing shelter for the survivors of a magnitude 7.5 earthquake and tsunami that struck the island chain Oct. 25, Ade Edward, operational head at the West Sumatra Regional Disaster Management Agency, said.
“Military and police personnel are already at villages with good transportation access,” Edward said by phone today from the West Sumatra provincial capital, Padang. “They will start building non-permanent houses there.”
The death toll from the Oct. 25 tsunami in Mentawai was revised down to 427 today from 431 yesterday, with 75 missing, Ferdhatama said.
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