Ash spewing from a volcano on Indonesia’s main island of Java has sparked chaos for holidaymakers as airports close and international airlines cancel flights to tourist hotspot Bali, stranding thousands.
Mount Raung in East Java Province, about 150km from Bali’s international airport, has been rumbling for several weeks. The level of activity increased in the past week and yesterday, it blasted ash and debris 3,800m into the air.
Government volcanologist Gede Suantika said the eruption forced authorities to close five airports due to the risks posed by volcanic ash, though two airports on Lombok Island reopened yesterday afternoon.
Photo: AP
The transport ministry has told airlines to avoid routes near the mountain.
It says a decision about reopening other airports will be made by early yesterday evening.
Suantika said lava and ash fall from the 3,332m-high mountain on Indonesia’s most densely populated island has also resulted in the government calling on people to stay away from a 3km high-danger zone around the volcano.
Evacuation of residents living near the volcano is still considered unnecessary, but authorities are urging people to wear masks.
Volcanic eruptions can cause significant and lengthy disruption to travel. A 2010 eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokul volcano produced an ash cloud that caused a week of international aviation chaos, with more than 100,000 flights canceled.
“Ash can clog engines and harm other parts of the aircraft,” Indonesian Ministry of Transport spokesman Julius Adravida Barata said.
Airports on the islands of Bali and Lombok, as well as airports at Banyuwangi and Jember in East Java, were closed late on Thursday.
Barata said thousands of travelers are stranded.
Flights within Indonesia were already overbooked as tens of millions of the country’s Muslims pour out of major cities to return to their villages during an annual mass exodus to celebrate the end of the Islamic holy month.
The volcano has proven particularly problematic for Australians, who flock to Bali during Australia’s school holidays.
Dozens of flights between Australia and Bali’s Ngurah Rai airport by Australian carriers Jetstar and Virgin Australia have been canceled over the past week, with the airlines citing safety concerns.
Both carriers said they are looking into adding extra flights between Australia and Bali when conditions improve to help clear the backlog.
At Bali’s international airport, some tourists slept on benches or stood at flight information boards filled with “postponed” and “delayed” notifications.
Some complained of a lack of information about their delayed flights.
“The airline can’t tell us if we’re going to be here tonight or fly tomorrow or the next day,” said Charmaine Scott, an Australian holidaymaker. “This is really difficult for us. We have to basically find some way to stay.”
She said that she and her husband had not heard about the eruption and flight cancelations until they arrived at the airport yesterday morning.
Raung is among about 130 active volcanoes in Indonesia. The archipelago is prone to volcanic eruptions and earthquakes because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a series of fault lines stretching from the Western Hemisphere through Japan and Southeast Asia.
Another Indonesian volcano, Mount Sinabung in Sumatra, has been erupting for two months, forcing the evacuation of more than 10,000 people.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of