WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK AT MOUNT SINABUNG?

Mount Sinabung is a 4,260m tall volcano in the North Sumatran region of Indonesia. It formed over centuries, 15,00,000 years ago during the last Ice Age with layers upon layers of thick magma oozing out slowly from the top and building up along the sides, raising its height. This kind of volcano is called a ‘stratovolcano.’

It is a part of a chain of volcanoes around the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra that were created because the Indo-Australian tectonic plate and the Eurasian plate collided with each other, the former gradually sliding underneath the latter. As the plate gets pushed underneath the weight of the Eurasian plate, the friction and pressure causes its rock to melt into magma, which rises to the top to form a volcano.

Sinabung has been active since 2010 when it reawakened from a 400year-old slumber from its last recorded eruption in 1600, and rumbled for a month. In September 2010, it erupted at least thrice, spewing ash and dust up to 3km in the air. Rain mixed with this ash, covering everything with a thick layer of mud for kilometres in the vicinity. The government had already begun monitoring the volcano intensively and evacuated several thousands.

In the second half of 2013, it erupted again and kept continuously belching out small quantities of ash and dust into the air. In 24 hours, between January 4 and 5, 2014, the volcano erupted over a 100 times. In February 2015, Sinabung released a heavy screaming jet of gas and dust into the air, killing 16 people. In May 2016, it again killed seven people who thought it had been safe to move back to evacuated regions.

The area around the volcano has been since evacuated properly and Sinabung erupted several times more between 2016 and 2018.

In February 2018, Sinabung gave a shudder and explosively erupted,