The eruption of the Marapi volcano, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, claimed the lives of at least eleven young hikers this Sunday. Their bodies were found this Monday near the crater by rescue teams, who in the morning were still searching for twelve other missing mountaineers, until new emissions of ash have forced them to suspend tracking efforts.
Until then, they had managed to rescue alive three young people, of both sexes, who had burns and had to be evacuated to hospitals in the nearby seaside resort of Bukittinggi.
Marapi, which among the 129 active volcanoes in the Indonesian archipelago is the most fearsome on the island of Sumatra, has been under surveillance since it awoke in January, without causing any casualties. This time it has spit out tons of ash three thousand meters high, covering the villages closest to its crater with a finger of black dust. The smell of sulfur is noticeable even in Bukittinggi, according to residents.
The authorities have ordered the evacuation of a three-kilometer radius. When Marapi – which means “fire mountain” in Malay – erupted yesterday at three in the afternoon, there were officially 75 climbers and hikers registered online as visitors to the protected area, although not all of them intended to reach the summit. . However, the real figure would be higher, since not everyone complies with this procedure.
In any case, forty-nine of them have already returned home or are on their way, safe and sound. Some injured people, rescued not far from the crater, were carried on their backs by rescue teams, although most were able to do so on their own. Even in broad daylight, the ash cloud is preventing helicopters from participating in the rescue.
Sumatra, the largest island in Indonesia, is larger than the entire Japanese archipelago and presents a great ethnic and linguistic variety. The villages closest to Marapi are inhabited by the Minangkabau, a people of relatively recent Islamization, who make up one of the largest matrilineal societies – lands and surnames pass from mothers to daughters – on the planet, with several million people.
Marapi, 2,891 meters high, is the most active on the island of Sumatra. In its deadliest recent eruption, in 1979, it left sixty dead. Even so, Marapi is not as active or as tall as Merapi – in neighboring Java – nor as famous as Krakatoa.
Since Friday, Marapi was at the second highest alert level – out of a total of four – which did not prevent hikers from ascending. In fact, the mayor of the nearest seaside resort this Sunday rejected the first reports of deaths as “a hoax.”
Its eruption lasted 4 minutes and 41 seconds, according to the Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation). It should be said that the Indonesian archipelago sits within the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, an area of ??great seismic and volcanic activity, shaken annually by about 7,000 earthquakes.
