Indonesia's Mount Marapi volcano eruption leaves 11 dead, 12 missing: Here's the latest on the search for missing climbers.
Over 100 people from the local search and rescue teams took part in operations to locate missing climbers on the volcano.
At least 11 hikers were killed, and another 12 are missing after a volcano in Indonesia erupted on Sunday. Mount Marapi, located in West Sumatra, spewed thick clouds of ash reaching heights of 9,800 feet.
The latest
At the time of the eruption, 75 mountaineers were climbing the volcano. Local officials confirmed that 52 of them were evacuated by West Sumatra’s search and rescue agency.
On Monday, rescue efforts to locate those missing had been affected by smaller sporadic eruptions. However, Jodi Haryawan, a spokesperson for the rescue team, said the search was not brought to a halt. “Once it was safer they continued the search,” he said.
Some of the 120 rescuers who had been involved in the search worked through Sunday night to locate missing hikers. At least three people were found alive near the volcanic crater after suffering severe burns. Pictures of the recovery operations show rescuers maneuvering through the rough terrain, evacuating victims down the slopes of the volcano.
“They are being carried down manually. Rescuers are taking turns bringing them down,” Abdul Malik, West Sumatra’s search and rescue agency head, told AFP. “We can’t do an air search with a helicopter because the eruption is ongoing.” Of the three found alive at the crater, Malik described their conditions as “weak.”
The mother of Zhafirah Zahrim Febrina, a rescued 19-year-old climber, said her daughter was going through “tremendous trauma” after enduring a night of pain from her burns. Febrina was one of 18 students who were on a hiking trip when the volcano erupted.
Were climbers allowed on the active volcano?
Since 2011, Mount Marapi has been at the third-highest alert of four levels, meaning locals and climbers are prohibited from traveling farther than 2 miles below the peak.
“This means that there should be no climbing to the peak,” Hendra Gunawan, the head of the Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation, said. However, despite the warning, Gunawan said, many climbers “broke the rules to fulfill their satisfaction to climb further.”
Is this unprecedented?
Mount Marapi is the most active volcano in West Sumatra and has been erupting intermittently since 2004. The deadliest eruption was in 1979 when close to 60 people died. Marapi is just one of the more than 120 active volcanoes in the country. The largest living population in the world to live near a volcano, roughly 8.6 million people, is located in Indonesia.
