THOUSANDS SEEK REFUGE AS ERUPTION LOOMS
Evacuation centres, hotels swamped as Bali airport closes for a second day
EVACUATION centres and hotels in Bali filled up yesterday with tens of thousands seeking refuge as a volcano on the Indonesian resort island threatened to erupt, forcing the closure of the main airport for a second day.
Stranded tourists hunted for accommodation while frightened villagers living in Mount Agung’s shadow made their way to more than 200 evacuation centres as the mountain gushed smoke and ash.
The rumbling volcano, which last erupted in 1963, killing around 1,600 people, forced the authorities to close Bali’s airport as experts raised the alert level to maximum.
Towering columns of thick grey smoke have been rising from the mountain since last week, and in the last few days have begun shooting into the sky, forcing all flights to be grounded until at least today.
Officials have warned that the volcano, which looms over the tropical holiday paradise, could erupt at any moment.
Some 40,000 people have abandoned their homes in the danger zone, but as many as many as 100,000 will likely be forced to leave, disaster agency officials have said.
“Volcanic ash is spewing. It’s thick and rising up to 3km or 4km from the crater,” said I Gede Suantika, an official at Indonesia’s volcanology agency.
The exclusion zone around Agung, which is 75km from Kuta, has been widened to 10km.
Up to yesterday, 443 flights have been cancelled, affecting more than 120,000 passengers.
Inn operator I Wayan Yastina Joni was among the few hoteliers willing to take up an appeal by Bali’s governor and tourism agency to supply free rooms to thousands of visitors, though some offered discounts.
“I don’t mind giving free accommodation to tourists I know,” said the owner of Pondok Denayu Homestay.
“This is nobody’s fault. It’s a natural disaster that no one expected,” he said.
Hundreds of tourists are being shuttled to Surabaya — some 13 hours’ drive away — so they can fly out of the country.
“We are preparing 10 buses and more can likely be provided later today,” Bali Transportation Agency head Agung Sudarsana said yesterday.
The airport on nearby Lombok island has opened and closed several times in the past few days. It is currently open but may yet be shuttered again, officials said.
Mount Agung’s last eruption was one of the deadliest ever seen in a country with nearly 130 active volcanoes.
“I am worried because I have experienced this before,” said 67year-old evacuee Dewa Gede Subagia, who was a teenager when Agung last roared.
“I hope this time I won’t have to evacuate for too long. In 1963, I left for four months.”
Experts said, however, that Agung’s recent activity matched the build-up to the earlier disaster, which ejected enough debris — about one billion tonne — to lower global average tempera-
tures by 0.2°C to 0.3°C for about a year.
“What we are seeing at the moment are small explosions, throwing out hot gases and fragments of molten rock, or ash,” said David Pyle, a volcano expert at Oxford University.
“The probability of a large eruption is high, but this may take days, or weeks, to unfold.”
Agung rumbled back to life in September, forcing the evacuation of 140,000 people. Its activity decreased in late October and many returned to their homes.
However, on Saturday, the mountain sent smoke up into the air for the second time in a week in what volcanologists call a phreatic eruption — caused by the heating and expansion of groundwater.
On Monday, so-called cold lava flows appeared — similar to mud flows and often a prelude to the blazing orange lava of the popular imagination.