Thousands Flee As Java Volcano Threatens to Blow

Thousands of Indonesians living on the slopes of Mount Merapi yesterday moved to refugee camps as the amount of poisonous smoke and gas spewing out of the rumbling volcano increased significantly.

But thousands more, fearing their property and livestock might be stolen, refused to budge despite the authorities putting the volcano on the highest alert and warning that a major eruption was imminent, although impossible to predict precisely.

Ratamo Purbo, the head of the government volcano research centre in Yogyakarta in central Java, the nearest city to Merapi, said the mountain belched noxious fumes, sometimes hundreds of metres high, 51 times yesterday morning. This compares with 19 times in the same period on Saturday.

He added there had been no major lava flows yesterday but a lava dome had formed in the volcano's crater and that it could collapse at any time.

"If the new lava dome collapses, it will bring a new catastrophe with the free flowing of lava and the pouring of hot ash and other little material," Mr Ratamo said.

Experts say the hot clouds rather than the more spectacular lava are the main worry.

"Hot clouds keep appearing all the time," Sugiono, a volcanologist at a station overlooking the mountain told the Associated Press. "If you get stuck in them, then you have no chance."

Merapi is one of the world's most active volcanoes.

Located on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" 250 miles east of Jakarta, the 2,911 metre (9,550-ft) peak last erupted in 1994, killing 60 people. About 1,300 people died in a 1930 eruption.

Indonesia is home to 129 active volcanoes and several erupt, usually mildly, every year.

A few dozen people, particularly the elderly, young and infirm, left their homes on the upper slopes more than a week ago but the evacuation accelerated significantly yesterday after the alert level was raised on Saturday. It is thought about 5,000 people have left their homes with a similar number remaining in the five-mile-radius "danger zone".

Local television showed people, belongings and livestock being loaded on to trucks and taken down the slopes to makeshift refugee centres.

"I didn't need to think twice," said Ariani, an old woman at a shelter in a camp at a government building. "They said move, and I moved."

Some refused to go despite the mandatory evacuation order.

"I've sent my wife and children away but I need to stay to make a living, I need to tend my fields and protect my home," Susanto, a young farmer, told a local television station.

Police set up roadblocks to prevent tourists trekking up the slopes but allowed locals to return to their homes. "We're strongly advising them not to stay the night in the villages, however, it's just too risky," a police spokesman in the town of Magelang told the Guardian.

Many locals, despite professing faith in a recognised religion, retain strong animist beliefs and have been invoking the spirits who are thought to inhabit the volcano in a bid to subdue its anger.