National Post (National Edition)
Escape from crumbling crater
Hiker on ledge as quake hit in Indonesia
Early on Sunday morning, Mackenzie Irwin posed for a photo at the top of Mount Rinjani in Indonesia. Seconds later, she was running for her life.
The 28-year-old lawyer from Toronto was steps away from the edge of the volcanic crater at the top of the mountain when a 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck. The ground around her began shaking violently, sending her falling toward her Indonesian guide. Then she saw the ledge, where she had been perched moments before, collapse into the mouth of the volcano.
Several yards away was a larger plateau where dozens of hikers had gathered to watch the sunrise. As Irwin struggled to regain her balance, she saw most of that plateau crumble into the crater, taking hikers with it.
“People were climbing on top of each other because the plateau was just falling away,” she said by telephone from the nearby island of Gili Air. Once the shaking had stopped, she remembered, all the local guides near the summit yelled just one thing: “Run.”
Irwin was one of about 800 hikers caught in the earthquake that rocked the Indonesian island of Lombok on Sunday. At least 16 people were killed and more than 300 were injured, the BBC reported. New reports said some hikers were among the dead, but Irwin said no one in her group was killed or seriously injured.
Irwin, who first started hiking as an undergraduate student 10 years ago, was admitted to the bar in Toronto in June and was travelling through Southeast Asia with a friend to celebrate. She made a last-minute decision to trek up Mount Rinjani and flew alone to Lombok for what she thought would be a straightforward hike.
At 12,224 feet, Mount Rinjani is the second-tallest mountain in Indonesia. The active volcano is a popular destination for hikers, attracting more than 89,000 visitors in 2016, the Jakarta Post reported. A highlight of the hike is watching the sunrise from the rim at the summit, which looks over a lake inside the enormous crater.
Irwin said she woke at 2 a.m. Sunday to make the three-hour trek from her campsite to the summit. When the quake hit, nearly everyone was knocked to the ground. Others were buried up to their knees in loose volcanic rock, Irwin said.
Local guides, many barefoot or in slippers, were bleeding as they ran toward the rim and tried to pull people away from the edge. Amid the chaos, guides yelled at hikers to descend the mountain as quickly as they could, explaining that earthquakes on Lombok have been followed by volcanic eruptions.
It took Irwin two hours to reach her campsite. She met one of the four people who had been in her hiking group, then waited 15 minutes for another hiker to arrive before descending the mountain, scrambling to avoid falling rocks each time there was another tremor. Some paths that her group had used to ascend the mountain had fallen away; others had been split by ravines created by the earthquake. In many places, the hikers walked single-file to avoid the crumbling edges of pathways, Irwin said.
By the time she and her group reached the bottom, Irwin had been on the move for 11 hours, stopping only three times to drink water. “You just didn’t know when another quake was going to come ... we never felt that we were in the clear,” she said.
The quake has taken both a physical and emotional toll. “I can’t walk,” Irwin said, two days after the gruelling descent. “I’m very sore. I pushed my body to the limit.” She added that she sometimes feels the tremors of a quake even though there have not been any. She flinches when she hears loud sounds and has trouble sleeping.
But Irwin feels lucky to escape without major injuries. She plans to return to Lombok in the coming days to help with disaster-relief efforts.