"Lethal" tsunami warnings follow apocalyptic Indonesian volcano eruption | Richard Lloyd Parry

the situation in uh Eastern Indonesia is that there's a very large and spectacular volcanic eruption going on began on Tuesday night uh the name of the volcano is is ruang Mount ruang which is also the name of the island uh which is formed by this volcano uh and since Tuesday evening there have been five significant sized eruptions there uh a lot of earthquakes very large amounts of Ash and debris being expelled from this volcano right up into the a miles up into the into the atmosphere uh as well as uh lava flowing down the slopes and uh rocks being sprayed out from the volcano as far as a neighboring Island which is you know a few kilometers of shore uh and and a lot of people are are threatened by this so the 800 or so inhabitants of the island have all been shipped off they're also now having to evacuate many of the 20,000 people live on the neighboring Island and one of the big concerns is that accompanying these eruptions of course are are earthquakes that the the Earth is shaking and because these are islands that surrounded by sea this could very easily cause tsunamis which could uh be driven out from the the island the volcano where this is happening and smash into the neighboring Islands potentially with great loss of life tago landang has 20,000 people on it roughly and they're aiming to evacuate 11,000 who uh who live along that side of the island facing Mount ruing volcano um I I mean there is no real upper limit to the size of earthquakes and and tsunamis I mean to give you an idea in during a previous eruption of this volcano in 1871 an entire Village on one side of the neighboring Island Tandon was wiped out uh with with a with a great deal of loss of life so I mean this is a real uh and potentially very lethal threat and uh take it very seriously I haven't seen any reports of deaths or serious injuries yet I mean there are rocks raining down on the neighboring Island tagulandang uh reports there of you know people have holes in their roofs from these bits of rock that are falling out of the sky so it wouldn't be at all surprising if there were some injuries but I don't think there's anything serious yet at least none that have been reported people on the ground you know who have spoken to journalists are uh you know reporting that uh there doesn't seem to be kind of Panic or or chaos there's there's damage you know being done to to to property even on the neighboring Island the people on the volcano itself I think everyone's gone from there uh but on Teo landang people are uh it seems following the the evacuation orders I mean you'd have to be very stubborn or stupid I think to to insist on staying put when all this stuff is raining down out of the sky and you can see across the straet it's not very far uh you know spectacular images which uh you know have been have been broadcast around the world of this cloud of smoke and Ash rising up uh and then lightning uh bolts as well playing around it it really does look you know extremely impressive almost apocalyptic so I mean it's clear that something very dramatic and violent is happening and I think people are taking it seriously these lightning bolts is that linked to the eruption is that caused by the eruption or is that just a coincidence billions and billions countless tiny particles of Ash uh which which is hard matter you know it's it's rock pulverized Rock going up into the air and it's something to do with the electrical P capacity of all these particles that creates this lightning so yeah the lightning is not lightning coming out of storm clouds like we used to it's lightning created by this huge ashcloud I I mean this stuff is going in I I saw at one point it was going up two and a half miles into the air but possibly even higher so I mean it's really big but Indonesia has it's the most volcanic country in the world it has 127 active volcanoes um and over the years there have been absolutely massive eruptions you know bigger still than this uh one of the most famous was um the explosion on another Volcano Island katoa uh in 1883 which was so big and the amount of matter expelled into the atmosphere was so great that it changed weather around the world for several years the following summer around the world crops failed thousands of miles away men on other continents because this cloud of Ash blocked out the sun essentially and for years afterwards you know people in Europe uh people who' never even heard of this volcano were reporting spectacularly beautiful very red sunset caused by this kind of film of Ash that was filling the air across the Earth so I mean they can be really be very consequential their effects I mean Indonesia is a land of of natural disasters um people will remember the the 2004 tsunami that struck Sumatra um where it killed over 100,000 people I mean that was that was so massive no one could handle that nobody would have been able to face that um but that you know they have disaster agencies they have rescue workers who are on standby to react these to these kind of things because they can happen with without warning um Indonesia is not a country uh where standards of building are particularly high so in Japan where I live and and also in um Taiwan where there was a big earthquake of course the other week the buildings really the modern buildings really are very strong and built to last and if you're in a modern building and there's an earthquake you don't really have to worry that much that it's going to collapse on your head generally they don't they stay up uh in Indonesia that's that's not always the case the uh building codes are not so strict the standards are not so high uh but at the moment the islands where this is taking place are fairly uh remote they're sort of small places um so it's people living in kind of one story buildings there aren't there aren't any big cities with you know T skyscrapers and so on the the other thing that's happened by the way is that the uh the closest international airport at monardo which is a city on the island of sui not so far from the volcano the manada airport has closed down because one of the effects of an ash cloud like this is to uh jeopardize the engines of aircraft so there was a very famous case in 1982 when a British Airway 747 was flying over another island in Indonesia the island of java uh at 37,000 ft and they weren't aware that below them uh a volcano was erupting throwing up all his Ash and the the the Boeing 747 lost all four of its engines they just went silent and it was gliding slowly towards the Earth the pilots didn't understand why this was happening or know what to do and then it emerged from the cloud and the engine started again one by one and and everyone was safe so ever since that happened uh pilots and Airlines and and airports have been extremely careful when there is volcanic ash in the air that they don't fly through it because it can have very nasty effects on engines

Channel: Times Radio

Views: 32,414

Keywords: indonesia volcano, volcano, indonesia, indonesia volcano eruption, volcano indonesia, volcano eruption indonesia, volcano eruption, merapi volcano indonesia, indonesia volcanic eruption, ruang volcano, volcanic eruption indonesia, indonesia volcano eruption 2023, indonesia volcano eruption mount merapi, volcanic eruption, indonesia eruption, indonesian volcano mount merapi erupts, indonesia volcano news, java volcano indonesia, indonesia volcano blast, indonesia tsunami

Id: vji2z9hMueU

Length: 8min 30sec (510 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 18 2024