End of Mount Merapi eruptions difficult to predict, expert says

Thu, 11 Nov 2010

Yogyakarta, Indonesia - It remained difficult to predict when the eruptions of Mount Merapi would ease, a vulcanologist said Thursday, as the Indonesian volcano kept spewing clouds of hot ash from its crater.

"We will cooperate with the Indonesian experts to measure the volume of magma of Mount Merapi. We do not know how much magma is left," Masato Iguchi, a vulcanologist of Japan's Kyoto University, said at the Center of Investigation and Technology Development in nearby city of Yogyakarta.

"Until now, the activities of Mount Merapi were still volatile. Eruptions are still ongoing, so we cannot downgrade the volcano's alert status," said Surono, head of the Center of Vulcanology and Geological Mitigation Agency. Like many Indonesians he uses only one name.

The National Disaster Management Agency has raised the death toll to 191 since the volcano began erupting on October 26 with nearly 600 others injured. More than 300,000 residents were displaced.

As many as 233 people were still reported missing, an official of the Yogyakarta police's disaster victim identification team said.

Rescue chief Suseno said the next search would be focused on the area along Gendol river, from which many people were still missing. Efforts to look for at least 20 people in Glagah Malang, a hamlet in Sleman district, had been halted as the volcanic ash blanketing the area was still hot.

"We will resume our search and evacuation efforts on Friday with the hope the ash will much cooler," said Jimmy Ramoz, spokesman of a rescue team from Indonesia's army special forces.

Japan also sent a team of doctors to help survivors dealing with respiratory illnesses, while vulcanologists from the United States and France are monitoring the activities of Mount Merapi.

Surono said Merapi was a natural laboratory for researchers.

The 2,968-meter volcano's deadliest eruption on record occurred in 1930 when 1,370 people were killed. At least 66 people died in a 1994 eruption, and two people were killed in 2006, the latest eruption before Merapi rumbled back to life last month.

Indonesia has about 500 volcanoes, nearly 130 of them active and 68 classified as dangerous.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/353027,difficult-predict-expert-says.html.