Rumbling Bali volcano forces poorest from their homes
▶ As tourists remain outside the evacuation zone, Mount Agung is on code red – it may erupt soon, rumble on for months … or simply go back to sleep
On a velvety evening in Bali’s surfer centre of Canggu, Old Man’s restaurant is drawing a healthy crowd.
Under strings of fairy lights around bright tables, locals, expats and tourists sip their drinks to the strains of an offkey live band. Down the road at Deus ex Machina, every table is full and the car park is packed with bikes.
Canggu might have been a little quieter last night than a typical shoulder season, but not by much. And Bali does not feel like an island under threat – at least not here, in the south.
Yet since Friday last week, the island of the gods has been the epicentre of a media storm, as Mount Agung, the sacred mountain that dominates Bali’s north-east corner, judders, steams and threatens to erupt.
Then, Indonesia’s volcanologists declared Agung at code red – the highest possible alert status, meaning they believe an eruption could be imminent.
Indonesia’s 18,000 or so islands are home to almost 130 active volcanoes and warnings, although not uncommon, are not issued lightly.
The country’s disaster management agency, working with charities, has so far moved 105,000 people from around Agung to safety.
These are some of Bali’s poorest people and they stand to lose everything – rice crops, livestock and homes, which now stand as empty and forlorn as Pura Besakih, Bali’s holy mother temple.
But the timing and the scale of any eruption is impossible to predict.
“Volcanoes are in between completely unpredictable, like earthquakes, and well predicted over the next five days, like hurricanes. So it’s not always clear what action to take,” said geophysicist Eric Fielding.
While Indonesia’s volcano experts are monitoring Agung closely, all they can tell is whether magma is moving towards the surface (it is) and whether energy is building (it is). This suggests the volcano will erupt and that it is likely to be soon.
Yet it is also possible that Agung may rumble on for months before exploding and it may even go back to sleep.
Is it time to head for the hills? The tourists in Old Man’s, more than 60 kilometres from Mount Agung, do not think so.
Parisians Flora Louvois and Laura Coz are taking a couple of months off in Asia to recover from their law exams.
They started their sojourn in the dive town of Amed, in north-east Bali – outside the evacuation zone yet in the shadow of the volcano.
“People were really worried and we were the only tourists. Everyone had left,” Ms Louvois said. “The shops were closed; there were no fresh vegetables; people had nothing to do. But here we feel safe. The only worry is about our flight to Cambodia next week.”
Joshua Corey, a designer from Portland, Oregon, was similarly unconcerned, even by the volcanic tremors, a mild vibration.
“I’m not worried about anything,” Mr Corey said.
“I heard about the volcano on the day I arrived, when my mother started texting me to get out of here.”
Bali’s major tourist destinations are so far outside the Mount Agung exclusion zone that they don’t even figure on the same map. Ubud is 30km from Agung and Kuta 75km away, while the exclusion zone extends no further than 12km.
It is possible that falling ash could affect Bali’s tourist hotspots. The International Volcanic Health Hazard Network is advising people to prepare to protect their lungs and shops on the island are reordering the recommended N95 dust masks.
Yet, as with other recent eruptions, such as Lombok’s Rinjani and Java’s Raung, the biggest impact of Agung on tourists will be airport closures.
Flights are running as normal but on Tuesday the airport’s status was upgraded from yellow to orange, meaning Agung is “exhibiting heightened unrest with increased likelihood of eruption”.
Tourism contributes more than US$12 billion (Dh44.08bn) to Indonesia’s economy and most of the tourists enter through Bali’s Denpasar airport.
Almost 600,000 foreigners arrived in Bali last month. Stuart McDonald, the publisher of travel planning website Travelfish.org, says there isn’t the capacity to take that many people off the island in any comfort.
“Hopefully if Agung erupts it isn’t a long-running eruption,” Mr McDonald said. “If the airport is closed for a long period there is not the ferry capacity to move people off the island.”
It is difficult to overstate the importance of tourism to Bali’s economy and hard to measure it, as much tourism income goes undeclared to the authorities. Mr McDonald says it is important to support the island in its time of need.
“What I would say to people now is that, unless you are coming to Bali to climb Agung or dive Tulamben, come,” he said.
“If you’re thinking about booking a holiday, check your travel insurance first, because the chances are that you won’t be covered insurance-wise for anything related to Agung if you book a holiday now.”
If Bali’s Denpasar airport is closed for a long period there is not the ferry capacity to move people off the island STUART MCDONALD Publisher of Travelfish.org