Villagers watch hot lava flowing from the Mount Merapi volcano close to Bebeng village near the city of Yogyakarta in central Java, Indonesia, on Saturday. - REUTERS
MOUNT MERAPI (AP):
Indonesia's Mount Merapi belched out plumes of black smoke and red-hot clouds of deadly gases yesterday, 24 hours after scientists ordered the evacuation of villagers from its slopes amid warnings that a major eruption was imminent.
IGNORED WARNINGS
But even as lava flows scorched fresh scars down the mountain's western flank, many villagers ignored the warnings and returned to their homes to tend animals and crops that flourish on its fertile slopes.
Vulcanologists raised Merapi's alert status to the highest level on Saturday after weeks of activity at the 3,000-metre (9,800-foot) peak, which rises from the plains of Indonesia's densely populated Java Island.
The status meant automatic evacuation for thousands of women, children and the elderly who were immediately shuttled by bus and trucks to emergency shelters. Small groups of men were allowed to stay behind overnight to ensure thieves did not move in.
"I didn't need to think twice," said Ariani, an ageing woman at one shelter in a make-shift camp at a government building lower down the mountain. "They said move, and I moved," she said, as other woman cooked breakfast at communal kitchens and hung out clothes to dry.
Police manned roadblocks yesterday preventing vehicles from getting within eight kilometres (five miles) of the volcano's crater, but allowed villagers to return home, advising them to leave again by nightfall.
"My feeling is it will not blow at this time," said Budi, a 30-year-old farmer, who came back to give grass to his cows. Like many other Indonesians, he goes by only one name.
More than 4,500 people living in villages closest to the crater or next to rivers, where hot lava is more likely to flow down, had been evacuated by yesterday. But many young men were staying put, said Widi Sutikno, the official coordinating the emergency response.
