YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia – The Indonesian volcano on Mount Merapi spewed avalanches of hot clouds on Thursday morning as hundreds of residents were evacuated from its fertile slopes.
Authorities evacuated more than 500 people who lived on the mountain in the Magelang district on the island of Java. Thousands of people have already had to leave their homes and farms because of the dangers of Merapi, Indonesia’s most active volcano.
Light eruptions continued throughout the day – one sending a column of warm clouds rising 200 meters into the air. The initial eruption was obscured by fog, but using seismic and other data, the Geological Disaster Technology Research and Development Center estimated that hot clouds had spread less than 0.6 miles from the crater.
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“So far, the potential danger is no more than 5 kilometers (3 miles),” said the head of the Yogyakarta Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazards Mitigation, Hanik Humaida, in a statement.
The geological authority raised Mount Merapi’s alert level to the second highest level in November, after sensors detected increasing activity. Tourism and mining activities have been disrupted.
Some homeless people returned to the slopes after activity slowed, but had to leave again on Thursday.
The 9,737-foot mountain is about 18 miles from the center of Yogyakarta. About 250,000 people live less than 9 km from the volcano, according to authorities in neighboring districts.
Merapi spat ash and hot gas into a column up to 3.7 miles in the sky in June, but no casualties were reported.
Its last major eruption in 2010 killed 347 people and caused the evacuation of 20,000 residents.
Indonesia, an archipelago with more than 250 million inhabitants, is located in the Pacific “Circle of Fire” and is subject to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Government seismologists monitor more than 120 active volcanoes.