Activity is increasing at Indonesia's smoking Mount Merapi, scientists said yesterday as more than 18,000 residents evacuated from its flanks waited in limbo at makeshift camps.
Merapi spewed its largest clouds of volcanic gas, ash and dust on Thursday, causing panic among residents who scurried down its slopes.
Early yesterday another billowing cloud sped 4.5km down its slopes, said Heru Suparwargaa, a vulcanologist at the Kailurang monitoring post at Merapi.
He said a cloud at 5am yesterday was one of 11 others plus 85 lava flows that spewed from the volcano in the first six hours of yesterday.
No injuries were reported as the clouds did not reach inhabited areas.
Antonius Ratdomopurbo from the vulcanology center in Yogyakarta, 30km south of Merapi, told reporters that a May 27 earthquake that devastated an area to its south had boosted activity at the volcano.
"The earthquake has made the volcano more active due to the pressure on the magma. Merapi has not returned to the state it was before the earthquake. The trend is its activity will continue to increase," he said.
The volcano on the island of Java was put on red alert on May 13, meaning scientists believed it was on the brink of eruption, which typically sees it belch hot, speeding clouds which burn everything in their paths.
The volcano's activity has been erratic since it was put on the alert but it escalated again this week.
Ratdomopurbo said however that an eruption of Merapi was not expected to be huge.
"The threat of Merapi only comes from hot clouds and lava. It's a small volcano and its eruption will not be catastrophic," he said.
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