Indonesia's Mt Merapi Erupts, Spewing Ash 6 Km High
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:
Indonesia's Mt Merapi erupts, spewing ash 6 km high:
Indonesia's Mount Merapi, one of the world's most active volcanoes, erupted twice on Sunday, sending clouds of grey ash 6,000 metres into the sky, the country's geological agency said.
The two eruptions lasted around seven minutes, according to the agency, and prompted local authorities to order residents to stay outside a three-kilometre no-go zone around the rumbling crater near Indonesia's cultural capital Yogyakarta.
The volcano had a similarly-large eruption on February 13 of this year. Eruptions there are not uncommon but it is dangerous to drop one's guard:
Mount Merapi's last major eruption in 2010 killed more than 300 people and forced the evacuation of some 280,000 residents.
It was Merapi's most powerful eruption since 1930, which killed around 1,300 people, while another explosion in 1994 took about 60 lives.
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