Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki in eastern Indonesia’s erupted again Thursday, spewing a column of hot clouds that rose 2,500 meters from its peak, three days after a midnight eruption killed nine people and injured dozens of others.
There was no immediate report of casualties from the latest eruption, which some described as the biggest they had ever seen from Lewotobi Laki-Laki..
The 1,584-meter volcano on Indonesia’s remote island of Flores unleashed clouds of gray hot ash Thursday. The mixture of rock, lava and gas was thrown up to 1 kilometer from its crater, Indonesia’s Center for Volcanology and Disaster Mitigation said in a statement.
The volcano lulled in activity since Monday’s deadly eruption killed nine people and injured 64 others.
Monday's eruption affected more than 10,000 people in 10 villages. About 4,400 villagers moved into makeshift emergency shelters after the eruption, which destroyed seven schools, nearly two dozen houses and a convent on the majority-Catholic island.
The country’s volcano monitoring agency increased Lewotobi Laki Laki's alert status to the highest level and more than doubled the exclusion zone to a 7-kilometer radius since then, prohibiting any activity in that area.
Authorities warned the thousands of people who fled not to return home, as the government planned to move about 16,000 residents out of the danger zone, said National Disaster Management Agency head Suharyanto, who like many Indonesians uses a single name.
“Permanent relocation is considered as a long-term mitigation measure to anticipate eruption in the future,” Suharyanto told reporters after visiting the devastated areas Thursday.
Lewotobi Laki Laki is one of a pair of stratovolcanoes in the East Flores district of East Nusa Tenggara province, known locally as the husband-and-wife mountains. “Laki laki” means man, while its mate is Lewotobi Perempuan, or woman.
