Indonesian Erruption Forces Evacuation of 1300

ABC News reports that "A volcano in western Indonesia erupted again Sunday, unleashing volcanic ash high into the sky and forcing the evacuation of villagers living around its slope. Officials raised Mount Sinabung's alert status to the second-highest level after the 2,600-meter (8,530-foot) -high mountain erupted early Sunday, said National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho. Authorities were working to evacuate residents from four North Sumatra province villages located within the mountain's three-kilometer (two-mile) danger zone, Nugroho said. About 1,300 villagers have been relocated to safer areas so far. It was the volcano's second big eruption since late last month, with its Oct. 24 explosion prompting the evacuation of more than 3,300 people." This video of Sinabung's 2010 eruption gives some clue about what to expect.

That volcano has a bad efficiency...

[gentryx]

Slightly off-topic, but this reminded me of how yesterday 20000 people were evacuated in Dortmund [cbsnews.com] (one of Germany's larger cities). And it didn't even need a full-fledged volcano to prompt this: a mere 4000 pounds, ~70 years old air mine was enough. Stuff like this is (still) daily business in Germany, though. They are still far from having cleared up all duds.

Re:In the words of the great George Carlin

[Sockatume]

Until 2010 it was a dormant volcano, and that sequence of eruptions resulted in no casulaties; in the odds game that is risk management, was not totally irrational to move back into the area.

Re:In the words of the great George Carlin

[ultranova]

"They build their houses right next to active volcanoes, and then wonder why there is lava in the living room."

It's almost as dumb as building them at the bottom of a gravity well and then worrying about meteors falling in and wrecking the place up.