Mount Merapi: Potential volcano eruption in Indonesia sees alert level raised

Authorities in Indonesia have raised the alert level over danger potentially posed by the Mount Merapi volcano, on the heavily populated island of Java.

Indonesia’s geological agency decided to raise the alert level after sensors tracked a rise in activity in the active volcano, the Associated Press reported on Thursday.

It already had been designated with the third-highest alert level since it began erupting last year, with ash and hot gas firing from the volcano as high as 6 kilometres in the air in June.

The last major eruption of the ,968-metre volcano occurred in 2010, killing 347 people and forcing as many as 20,000 people to flee their homes.

In the wake of the latest rise in activity, National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesperson Raditya Jati warned in a statement that officials need to be on alert.

“This condition can trigger a magma extrusion process or an explosive eruption,”Jati said.

As a necessary precaution, he said authorities were bringing a halt to both climbing and mining activities around the volcano.

Only officials and researchers, he said, would be able to access the area.

With the volcano being roughly 30 kilometres away from the Yogyakarta city centre, the chief of Yogyakarta’s Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Centre, Hanik Humaida, said villagers living on Merapi’s slopes should stay at least 5 kilometres away from the volcano’s mouth.

With Indonesia situated on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, the country has seen more than its fair share of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

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