Searing gas avalanched down an Indonesian volcano with a thunderous roar, torching houses and trees and incinerating villagers as they fled Mount Merapi’s worst eruption in a century. Dozens of bodies found yesterday raised the death toll to 122.
The injured — with clothes, blankets and even mattresses fused to their skin by the 750oC heat — were carried away on stretchers following the first big explosion just before midnight.
Soldiers joined rescue operations in hardest-hit Bronggang, a village 15km from the crater, pulling at least 78 bodies from homes and streets blanketed by ash up to 30cm deep.
Charred carcasses of cattle, crumpled roofs and broken chairs — all layered in white soot — dotted the smoldering landscape. Merapi was active throughout the day yesterday.
The volcano, in the heart of densely populated Java island, has erupted scores of times, killing more than 1,500 people in the last century alone, but tens of thousands of people live on its rolling slopes, drawn to soil made fertile by molten lava and volcanic debris.
Its latest activity started on Oct. 26. After yesterday’s explosion — said by volcanologists to be the biggest since the 1870s — officials announced by loudspeaker that the mountain’s danger zone had been expanded to 20km from the crater.
Previously, villages like Bronggang were still considered to be in the “safe zone.”
“The heat surrounded us and there was white smoke everywhere,” said Niti Raharjo, 47, who was thrown from his motorbike along with his 19-year-old son while trying to flee.
“I saw people running, screaming in the dark, women so scared they fell unconscious,” he said.
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