Indonesian officials yesterday searched through thick ash for bodies after Mount Sinabung volcano erupted, killing at least 15 people, with the only sign of life an ownerless mobile phone ringing inside an abandoned bag.
Scorching clouds engulfed victims during the eruption on Saturday, leaving rescuers with little hope of finding survivors as they searched through ash up to 30cm thick.
About 170 people, including from the military and police, armed with chainsaws and oxygen apparatus spread out through the destruction in Sukameriah village, officials said.
Photo: AFP
Sukameriah, just 2.7km from Sinabung’s crater, is located in the “red zone” around the volcano, where human activities are strictly banned, disaster official Tri Budiarto said.
Residents had been evacuated.
“It’s very dangerous and completely out of bounds. But many of the tourists still secretly went to the area to take photographs,” Budiarto added.
The first team to enter the village yesterday morning emerged 15 minutes later empty-handed, a correspondent there said.
“There’s no sign of human life. 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 which nearly reached my calves,” said Gito, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.
“We didn’t find bodies, but we picked up a bag belonging to one of the victims. The cellphone was ringing,” he said.
Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesman for the National Disaster Management Agency, was unable to put a figure to the number of people still missing, but said there was a “chance” that the death toll might rise.
“A body was spotted near a tree, but we have yet to evacuate [it],” he said.
Officials said finding survivors was unlikely.
“I doubt it would be possible for anyone to survive the heat clouds yesterday. So far, we have not found any more bodies,” said Lieutenant Colonel Asep Sukarna, who led the search operation.
The volcano on Sumatra started erupting in September last year, but on Saturday spewed hot rocks and ash 2,000m into the air, blanketing the surrounding countryside with grey dust.
Fourteen people — mainly Indonesian tourists, including four high school students on a sightseeing trip — were killed by lethal heat clouds which cascaded down the volcano.
A 24-year-old man who was accompanying his father to pay respects at the graves of their relatives died from his injuries early yesterday, raising the death toll to 15, Nugroho said.
Two other people are being treated for serious burns at a local hospital.
Officials said the threat of more searing heat clouds and the weather might affect search operations.
“It’s cloudy today so we worry that it might rain,” Karo district spokesman Robert Peranginangin said. “If it rains, the area will be muddy and hard to walk, so we will have to stop search and rescue.”
Officials are also putting up more signs to warn people not to enter the area, officials said.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the