Jakarta Globe, February 14, 2014
Workers cover the famous Borobudur temple to protect it. (EPA Photo) |
Jakarta.
Key tourism sites on the Indonesian island of Java were shut down on Friday as
Mount Kelud’s explosive eruption blanketed a significant swath of Central Java
in gray ash.
Workers
covered the iconic stupas and statues of Borobudur temple on Friday, closing
the region’s largest tourism location to visitors. The Prambanan temple and
Ratu Boko palace were also closed for the day. It was unknown on Friday when
the historic sites would reopen, the sites’ tourism company told the state-run Antara News Agency.
The company
apologized for any inconvenience they may have caused travelers.
“We’re
sorry for the inconvenient situation for people who were about to visit
Borobudur and Prambanan temples and the Ratu Boko archeological site,” said
Achamad Muchlis, secretary of the Taman Wisata Candi Borobudur, Prambanan dan
Ratu Boko Yogyakarta company.
Borobudur
could remained closed for the coming week, the company’s spokesman said.
“The
Borobudur temple conservation agency in Central Java has covered some of [the
temple's] stupas to protect the temple stones from volcanic ash,” spokesman
Indra said. “It’s predicted that the stupas will be covered for the next seven
days.”
Indra
warned tourists to not attempt to visit the sites, explaining that the roads
leading to Prambanan were still slick
with ash.
Mount Kelud
blew its top late Thursday night in an explosive eruption heard as far away as
Yogyakarta. As ash fell on Friday, the central government called for the
evacuation of 36 villages in a 10-kilometer radius around the volcano,
according to reports by Agence France-Presse. Some 200,000 were driven from
their homes in and around Kediri district, East Java.
The
eruption covered the region in thick ash as it spewed some 120 cubic meters of
debris 17 kilometers into the sky, Gede Suantika, of the Volcanology and
Disaster Mitigation Center (PVMBG), told the Indonesian news portal Detik.comon Friday.
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