The Indonesia volcano, Mount Siinabung had small eruptions over the weekend, but the eruption Monday spewed volcanic material up 16,400 feet.
What We Know:
- Mount Sinabung, located on Indonesia’s Sumatra Island, has been active since 2010. The eruption Monday spewed ash more than three miles through the nearby villages and homes.
- Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman of The National Disaster Mitigation Agency said officials raised Mount Sinabungs’ alert status from the eruption early Sunday, which was the second-highest level 8,530-foot-high mountain eruption. Residents were advised to stay at least 3.1 miles from the volcano crater’s mouth.
- A man on Twitter caught footage of the ash plume near homes after the eruption on video and tweeted it out.
The sinabung volcano in #Indonesia has exploded strongly sending an ash plume to about 30,000 feet up.
Here’s a video of the ash plume. pic.twitter.com/aexP3Kd20x— Deven_Intel (@Deven_Intel) August 10, 2020
- Mount Sinabung is one of 120 active volcanoes in Indonesia and located on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”. The “Ring of Fire” is a major area in the basin in the Pacific Ocean, where earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are common.
- The eruption Monday was the volcano’s second big eruption since July, where its last explosion was October 24 evacuating more than 3,300 people. Due to the volcano’s location near the fault lines in the Pacific Basin, eruptions are no surprise.
- Living near the Pacific “Ring of Fire” creates risks of eruptions and relocation for people in Indonesia. In the past years of eruptions, 30,000 people have been forced to evacuate and leave their homes.
Many people in Indonesia were seen wearing masks during the evacution. Indonesia has 128,776 people with confirmed coronavirus cases and 5,824 deaths, but for the virus those numbers are low.
