Thousands Flee Flores Island Fearing Volcanic Eruption
January 30, 2004
JAKARTA - Thousands of villagers on Indonesia’s Flores Island have fled their homes in fear that Mount Egon, dormant for eight decades, was heating up for a major eruption, officials said on Friday.
The 1,703-metres high Egon volcano suddenly started heating up on Thursday, belching sulfuric ash and black smoke from its crater, after being inactive for decades. The volcano’s renewed activity triggered a panic among residents living on the mountain’s slopes, the officials said.
Deputy district chief of the Sikka regency, Yoseph Ansar Rera said the volcano’s activities increased throughout Thursday, forcing local government authorities to evacuate residents living nearby.
Rera quoted residents as saying that they heard “thunder like” sounds from the volcano’s crater before it belched thick smoke containing sulphur.
A total 6,416 residents living in four villages in the danger zone have been evacuated to Maumere district town, about 35 kilometres away, another official from Sikka district’s social office said.
Rera said a team of volcanology experts from the province are closely monitoring Egon’s activity to determine whether it is due for a major eruption.
“We’re still waiting the monitoring results before making a definite decision that the fleeing residents may return to their homes,” Rera told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, by telephone.
He said the Egon volcano on the island of Flores, 1,665 kilometres east of Jakarta, has not in active for nearly 80 years.
Jakarta’s leading Kompas newspaper, an Indonesian daily, reported that similar activity from the Egon volcano occurred on April 1925, when it belched black smoke containing sulphur.
Egon’s latest eruption was in 1907, but no casualties were recorded.
Indonesia has the world’s highest density of volcanoes with 500 located in a so-called “Ring of Fire”, along the 5,000-kilometre long archipelago nation. Of these 128 are active and 65 are listed as dangerous.
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