Indonesian authorities raised Anak Krakatoa's status to high alert, the second-highest danger warning |
Indonesia
on Thursday raised the danger alert level for an erupting volcano that sparked
a killer tsunami at the weekend, after earlier warning that fresh activity at
the crater threatened to trigger another deadly wave.
Authorities
also widened a no-go zone around rumbling Anak Krakatoa to five kilometres
(three miles) -- up from a previous two kilometres -- and warned shell-shocked
residents to stay away from the coast, after more than 400 were killed by
Saturday night's wave.
Plumes of
ash burst into the sky as pyroclastic flows -- hot gas and other volcanic
material -- flowed down the crater, threatening anyone too close to the volcano
and raising the risk of rough seas for boats in the vicinity.
"There
is a danger of more eruptions," said national disaster agency spokesman
Sutopo Purwo Nugroho.
"People
(near the volcano) could be hit by hot rocks, pyroclastic flows and thick
ash."
Authorities
raised the crater's status to high alert, the second-highest warning on the
country's four-point danger scale, while aviation officials ordered flights to be
redirected away from the area.
Indonesia
is one of the most disaster-hit nations on Earth due to its position
straddling
the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire
|
'Just
pray for us'
The new
flows posed no immediate danger to nearby towns as the volcano sits in the
middle of the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra islands.
But the
status change sparked new fears with many residents already scared and refusing
to return to their communities over fears of another tsunami.
"This
worries me," said Ugi Sugiarti, a cook at the Augusta Hotel in hard-hit
Carita. "I've already left."
Sukma, a
security guard at the shattered Mutiara Carita Cottages, added: "Just
please pray for us and that everything will be okay."
A section
of the crater -- which emerged at the site of the Krakatoa volcano, whose
massive 1883 eruption killed at least 36,000 people -- collapsed after an
eruption and slid into the ocean, triggering Saturday night's killer wave.
Before and
after satellite images taken by Japan's space agency showed that a two square
kilometre chunk of the volcanic island had collapsed into the water.
At least
430 people were killed in the disaster, with 1,495 people injured and another
159 were missing.
Children
take part in a trauma healing programme in Labuhan in Banten Province
after the
devastating tsunami
|
Nearly
22,000 people have been evacuated and are living in shelters.
On
Wednesday evening, the disaster agency said that wind was blowing "ash and
sand" from the volcano to the nearby towns of Cilegon and Serang on Java,
and advised residents to wear masks and glasses if they had to venture
outdoors.
Early
warning system
Torrential
rains have sparked flooding in some areas, hampering the relief effort and
heaping more misery on the stricken region, as thousands cram emergency
shelters.
Medical
workers have warned that clean water and medicine supplies were running low --
stoking fears of a public health crisis.
Indonesia,
a vast Southeast Asian archipelago, is one of the most disaster-hit nations on
Earth due to its position straddling the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, where
tectonic plates collide.
The change
in the volcano's danger status sparked new fears with many local
residents
already scared and refusing to return to their communities over
fears of
another tsunami
|
The tsunami
was Indonesia's third major natural disaster in six months, following a series
of powerful earthquakes on the island of Lombok in July and August and a
quake-tsunami in September that killed around 2,200 people in Palu on Sulawesi
island, with thousands more missing and presumed dead.
The
disaster agency has said it installed new sensors to better monitor tremors at
the volatile volcano.
The agency
initially said there was no tsunami threat at all, even as the killer wave
crashed ashore.
It was
later forced to issue a correction and an apology as it pointed to a lack of
early warning systems for the high death toll.
One of the
hardest-hit areas -- Tanjung Lesung -- is on a list of 10 destinations that
Jakarta wants to turn into another Bali, the holiday island hotspot which draws
millions of tourists annually.
"We
need to have (tsunami) early warning systems, especially in tourist
destinations," Indonesia's tourism minister Arief Yahya said Thursday.
"We're
going to make that happen."
Maps showing the formation of Anak Krakatoa after the explosion of the Krakatoa volcano in 1883 https://t.co/khXx5ZEzbV pic.twitter.com/5ILZVQX82h— AFP news agency (@AFP) December 27, 2018
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