JakartaPost/AFP-Mar 22
Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki, a 1,703-meter twin-peaked volcano on the tourist island of Flores, erupted for 11 minutes and nine seconds late Thursday, authorities said, raising the volcano’s alert status to the highest level. A t least seven international flights from Indonesia’s resort island Bali have been cancelled, an airport official said Friday, after a volcano in the archipelago nation’s east erupted, shooting dark ash eight kilometers into the sky and forcing thousands to evacuate. Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki, a 1,703-meter twin-peaked volcano on the tourist island of Flores, erupted for 11 minutes and nine seconds late Thursday, authorities said, raising the volcano’s alert status to the highest level. As of 9:45 a.m. (1:45 GMT) Friday, “seven international flights had been cancelled, six of them are Jetstar flights bound to Australia and one Air Asia flight to Kuala Lumpur,” Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport spokesman, Andadina Dyah, said in a statement. Several other flights — both domestic and international, including to Thailand, Singapore and Australia — have been delayed, it said. The local government has declared a 14-day emergency and established a command post to coordinate response efforts, the country’s disaster agency spokesman (BNPB), Abdul Muhari, said in a statement on Friday. Abdul added that more than 4,700 residents have been evacuated as of Friday and called on those remaining to find a safe location. The local airport in Maumere, on Flores, the closest to the volcano, has not been affected by the ash, according to the transportation ministry. Volcanic ash from the eruption blanketed several nearby villages on Friday. At least two people were injured, including a man whose roof collapsed under volcanic debris, a local official said. The agency warned residents of the risk of volcanic mudflows due to heavy rainfall. The long eruption prompted the country’s geological agency to raise the volcano’s alert level to the highest of the four-tiered system. Authorities imposed an exclusion zone between seven and eight kilometers around the volcano, the agency added. In November, Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki erupted multiple times, killing nine people, cancelling scores of international flights to the tourist island of Bali and forcing thousands to evacuate. Indonesia, a vast archipelago nation, experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire.” Read more at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/indonesia/2025/03/22/flights-cancelled-thousands-evacuated-after-east-flores-volcano-eruption.html.
