Agung fires up the sky
Bali airport stays closed as volcano spews ash and smoke
A VOLCANO gushing towering columns of ash closed the airport on the Indonesian tourist island of Bali for a second day yesterday, disrupting travel for tens of thousands, as authorities renewed their warnings for villagers to evacuate.
Mount Agung has been hurling clouds of white and dark grey ash about 3000 metres above its cone since the weekend and lava is welling in the crater, sometimes reflected as an orange-red glow in the ash plumes. Its explosions can be heard about 12km away.
The local airport authority said yesterday that closure for another 24 hours was required for safety reasons. Volcanic ash poses a deadly threat to aircraft, and ash from Agung is moving southsouthwest toward the airport. Ash has reached a height of about 30,000 feet as it drifts across the island.
“I don’t know, we can’t change it,” said stranded German tourist Gina Camp, sitting on a bench at the airport.
“It’s the nature and we have to wait until it’s over.”
She decided to look on the bright side, saying she planned to go back out to enjoy another day on the island.
Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency raised the volcano’s alert to the highest level on Monday and expanded an exclusion zone to 10km from the crater in places from the previous 7.5km.
It said a larger eruption was possible, though a top government volcanologist has also said the volcano could continue for weeks at its current level of activity and not erupt explosively.
Agung’s last major eruption in 1963 killed about 1100 people. Authorities have told 100,000 people to leave homes close to the volcano, though as of Monday tens of thousands stayed because they felt safe or didn’t want to abandon livestock.