Volcanic fury

A general view showing Mount Agung spewing ashes between the gates of a Balinese temple seen at night from Karangasem Regency on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali. The authorities have closed the international airport on the island for a second day.

KARANGASEM: A volcano gushing towering columns of ash closed the airport on the Indonesian tourist island of Bali for a second day, 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 gray ash about 4,000m high and lava is welling in its crater.

The local airport authority said its closure for another 24 hours was required for safety reasons.

Volcanic ash poses a deadly threat to aircraft, and ash from Agung is moving south-southwest toward the airport.

“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.”

Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency said a larger eruption is possible, though a government volcanologist has also said Agung could stay at its current level of activity for weeks and not erupt explosively.

Nasa detected a thermal anomaly over the weekend, said Gede Swantika, a senior volcanologist in Bali.

“It means that there’s a direct conduit from the magma storage chambers in the crust up to the surface,” said Richard Arculus, a volcano expert at Australian National University.

“What stops most eruptions from happening is that you don’t have a conduit from where the magma’s reached, to the surface. Once you’ve got that opened .... it means there’s easier access for the magma upward out into the open.”

Agung’s last major eruption in 1963 killed about 1,100 people.