Indonesian officials are evacuating hundreds more residents near Mount Sinabung as the volcano continues to increase a lava flow and eruptions.
Gede Suantika, government volcanologist, said that 28 hot ash avalanches took place in one day on Mount Sinabung. The lava dome on the mountain continues to build in size creating the possibility of a serious eruption.
The number of people evacuated in recent weeks has topped 3,000.
The circle of exclusion around the mountain is now 3 miles. Residents forced to flee have been complaining about the forced evacuation, saying they are farmers and they have no way to make a living if they are forced off their land.
However, a Saturday blast of hot ash spread two miles from the volcano, leading the government to expand the forced evacuation and removal of angry residents.
The mountain has caused scientists to keep it on the highest alert level since June 2 with a lava dome estimated at 106 million cubic feet.
The mountain came alive after 400 years of dormancy in 2010. Last year, an eruption left 17 people dead. The mountain is on the Pacific Ring of Fire.
Indonesia was struck by a strong undersea earthquake on Wednesday but there were no reports of immediate injuries or damage.
No tsunami warning was issued.
The U.S. Geological Survey registered the quake at magnitude 6.6. The epicenter was 85 miles northwest of Ternate, the capital of the North Maluku province. It was 25 miles deep.
Ternate residents said they felt strong jolts from the quake but no buildings were destroyed despite swaying.
Indonesia is prone to earthquakes because of their position on the Pacific Ring of Fire.
A volcano in Eastern Indonesia erupted Friday, sending hot ash into the air and surprising hikers all over the mountain.
Officials say that nine people were injured and at least one person is missing as the hot ash continues to fall on the mountain.
A spokesman for Indonesia’s Disaster Mitigation Agency said that Mount Gamalama sent a plume of smoke over 6,500 feet into the sky. Slow moving lava has been moving down the peak but no evacuation orders have been issued to surrounding villages.
The airport in Ternate, about 20 miles from the volcano, has been forced to close. Schools and offices were also closed and evacuated because of the ash.
Mount Gamalama, located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, had its last major eruption in 2012.
Muslims throughout Indonesia are furious over the swearing in of Jakarta’s first Christian governor in nearly 50 years.
Basuki Tjahaja Purnama had been acting governor since Joko Widodo stepped aside to become the country’s President.
Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population and has been experiencing a wave of religious intolerance from Muslim hard liners angered that other religions have been given freedom to worship. The new president has vowed to protect religious minorities.
“I don’t need to be approved by everyone,” Purnama told reporters. “The ones that deny me aren’t Jakartans. They come from Bekasi, Depok, Bogor, which are not in my territory.”
Purnama is also the first ethnic Chinese governor of Jakarta. He is known as a transparent, no-nonsense leader who focuses on elimination of corruption in government.
A volcanic eruption on Indonesia’s most populated island killed three people and forced more than 100,000 to flee their homes.
The debris and ash cloud from the Mount Kelud eruption spread over such a wide area that seven different airports had to be closed because of unsafe conditions.
“The eruption sounded like thousands of bombs exploding,” Ratno Pramono, a 35-year-old farmer, told FoxNews. “I thought doomsday was upon us. Women and children were screaming and crying.”
Indonesia’s disaster agency said they had reports of the eruption from 125 miles away. The ash covered the country’s second largest city, Surabaya, and its population of 3 million. In one city dozens of miles from the mountain, the ash fall was so significant it turned day into night.
The disaster agency said they were monitoring the volcano, which is still trembling, but they believe there will not be another eruption. All towns within six miles of the volcano have been abandoned.
They look like tornadoes and they cause destruction like a tornado.
Except they’re really made of scalding hot white ash from the pyroclastic flow from Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung which has been in the midst of major eruptions.
A web video released on YouTube is showing a massive pyroclastic flow rushing down the mountain and destroying everything in its path with hot gas and ash. In the wake of the flow, the video shows multiple tornado-like vortexes that continue to spin and create debris.
Scientists say the twisters technically aren’t tornadoes because there is no cumulonimbus cloud at the top. The phenomenons are more like dust devils seen throughout the desert southwest. Heat from the flow causes hot air near the ground to rapidly rise.
The smoke from the volcano is not really smoke but vaporized rock from the heat of the volcano.
Just days after Indonesian officials told residents near Mount Sinabung was beginning to weaken in volcanic activity, a major eruption has left at least 15 people dead.
Fourteen of the dead are people who were on the side of the mountain when it erupted and died when a rush of hot gas burned them alive. At least four of the dead are high school students who went to the mountain on a field trip with their teacher who also died.
Witnesses say ash at least a foot thick has blanketed miles around the mountain and that rescuers have said it’s unlikely that anyone will be found alive. Sukameriah village, about two miles from the volcano crater, has been wiped from the face of the Earth.
“There’s no signs of human life,” a witness told AFP News Agency. “All the crops were gone. Many houses were damaged and those still standing were covered in thick white ash. It was hard to walk in ash that nearly reached my calves.”
Rescue efforts have been suspended at the recommendation of volcanologists. Searchers at the site had reported volcanic tremors and thick smog.
Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung burst open nine times on Monday, including one that shot hot lava almost four miles into the sky.
The National Disaster Mitigation Agency said that smoke and ash continue to bellow from the mountain and that lava flows have been seen winding down the mountain’s sides.
Government officials have declared a three-mile exclusion zone around the mountain forcing over 20,000 people to leave the area.
Volcanologists say the mountain had been building a lava dome since late November while it continued to spit out ash that devastated the crops of local farmers. The lava flows over the last two days have significantly lowered the level of the dome and it is expected to collapse in the next few days.
One of the country’s government volcanologists told UPI that they believe the volcano is reaching the end of its activity.
Indonesian officials are scrambling to evacuate residents still surrounding Mount Sinabung as eruptions continue to grow stronger throughout the day.
The eruptions send lava and searing hot gases rushing a mile down the mountain’s slopes and shot volcanic rock at much as 6,500 feet into the air. Authorities have raised the warning level for the mountain to its highest level and warned aircraft to avoid the area.
Officials say at least 15,000 people have now been taken out of a zone three miles wide around the entire mountain.
A local farmer who fled the exclusion zone with his family said that hot ash and gravel began to rain down on his village in the early morning hours.
The eruptions are having a devastating impact on farming in the area. Farmers as far as 45 miles from the volcano’s crater are reporting hot ash falling and coating their crops.
Two volcanoes in Indonesia have erupted sending thousands fleeing and destroying entire crops.
Mount Sinabung first erupted Thursday in the early morning hours sending a plume of ash 23,000 feet into the air in the Karo region of North Sumatra. The mountain then erupted again just before noon with an ash plume that rose 16,400 feet.
Government officials rushed at least 5,500 residents away from the area.
Then today Mount Sinabung was the second Indonesia volcano to erupt in a span of hours. Mount Merapi exploded just before 5 a.m. local time send a plume of ash 6500 feet into the air. Hours later, Mount Sinabung erupted stronger than ever with an ash cloud rising 26,500 feet into the air.
The Indonesian Transportation Ministry has issued a statement to all airlines telling them to avoid the airspace surrounding the volcanoes because of the ash and their current instability.
The ash from the volcanoes has destroyed the crops of farmers surrounding the mountain who depend on their crops to live. A local farmer told the Jakarta Globe the losses to farmers in the region could end up in the billions. He said some of the farm land has been so damaged by the volcanoes they can no longer be used for farming.
Indonesia is located on the Pacific Ring of Fire.