Indonesia's victims of Mount Merapi buried in mass grave
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Merapi is the youngest in a group of volcanoes in southern Java. It is situated at a subduction zone, where the Indo-Australian Plate is sliding beneath the Eurasian Plate. It is one of at least 129 active volcanoes in Indonesia, part of the Pacific Ring of Fire.
Mount Merapi unleashed its most powerful eruption in a century last Friday, sending clouds of hot gas, rocks and debris sliding down its slopes at motorway speeds, smothering villages and leaving a trail of dead. Explosions were heard as it shot ash up to four miles into the air, covering windscreens and rooftops hundreds of miles away. The ash hung so thickly in the air that breathing became painful.
Soldiers joined overnight rescue operations in Bronggang, nine miles (15 kilometers) from the crater of Mount Merapi, pulling at least 58 corpses from smoldering homes and streets blanketed by ash up to one foot (30 centimeters) deep.
Dozens of injured people - with clothes, blankets and even mattresses fused to their skin by the 1,400 degree Fahrenheit (750 degree Celsius) gas clouds - were carried away on stretchers. Authorities extended Mount Merapi's danger zone by three miles (five kilometers) to 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the crater after the new eruption, said Subandrio, a state volcanologist.
The Indonesian government has put Yogyakarta, a city of 400,000 people only 20 miles from Merapi, on alert. Though there have been no orders to evacuate, many residents have fled.
The bodies of people killed by Mount Merapi, some of them too charred ever to be identified, were yesterday buried in a mass grave as the nearby volcano continued to fire hot ash and gases in the atmosphere.
Via:guardian
