Indonesia’s Mount Merapi volcano erupted again this Friday erupted again, sending a plume about 6,000 meters high above the mountain, and killing another 39 people, Reuters reports. After ten days of eruptions, the death toll is now at 83. More than 75,000 people were forced to evacuate, and the number of injured people climbed up to 185.
“Because of today’s eruption, we found 39 bodies, so the total death toll is 83, and another 66 have been injured, so the total number of injured is 185 people,” Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the director of disaster risk reduction at the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, told Reuters.
An unnamed Reuters photographer near the volcano said he saw blackened burn victims being carried into the Sardjito hospital on Friday morning. “Their clothes had melted onto their skin,” he said.
Mount Merapi, Gunung Merapi (literally Mountain of Fire in Indonesian) is the most active volcano in Indonesia and has erupted regularly since 1548. However, this time, things are much worse than in the past. The country’s vulcanologist, Surono told the media that the volcano’s next behavior cannot be predicted. The volcano is very close to the city of Yogyakarta, but the authorities already evacuated villages within a 20 km radius, worried that things will escalate.
The Mountain of Fire is constantly active, with smoke emerging from the mountaintop at least 300 days a year. On 25 October 2010 the Indonesian government raised the alert for Mount Merapi to its highest level, as over 500 volcanic earthquakes had been recorded on the mountain over the weekend of 23–24 October. The volcano erupted later that day, and it continued erupting since.
“The mountain refuses to give any of these poor people peace,” said hospital spokesman Heru Nugroho as the bodies from the overnight eruption were brought in.
Feature image: Mount Merapi volcano spews smoke, as seen from Sidorejo village in Klaten. (Beawiharta/Reuters)
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