More than a thousand evacuated due to the eruption of the Semeru volcano in Indonesia

At the time of the eruption, ‘at four in the afternoon, it was as if it were midnight. It was very dark,’ said Faiz Ramadhani, a 20-year-old resident who described the experience as ‘horrible,’ in statements collected by AFP. Authorities had to relocate around 900 people to shelters in schools, mosques, and community halls, Sultan Syafaat, from the disaster management agency, reported.
Authorities also evacuated another 190 people who were on the slopes of the rocky massif, mostly climbers stranded at a camp after the eruption, said Rudijanto Tjahja Nugraha, director of Semeru National Park. The local geological agency has mentioned that while volcanic activity has calmed down this Thursday, fluctuations continue.
A search and rescue operations official reported that three people suffered burns due to the eruption. Additionally, some nearby homes were partially buried under ash and rock fragments. ‘My house was covered by a one-meter-high flow of volcanic material. Many homes suffered damage,’ Nurul Yakin Pribadi, head of Supiturang village, told AFP. One elementary school was completely destroyed, according to Agus Triyono, Lumajang district official.
The last eruption at Mount Semeru, which occurred in 2021, resulted in the death of over 50 people and damaged more than 5,000 houses. Indonesia, an archipelago in Southeast Asia with almost 130 active volcanoes, is located in the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire,’ where the collision of tectonic plates causes abundant volcanic and seismic activity.