Mount Tangkuban Parahu in Bandung, West Java, erupted at 3.48pm local time on Friday July 26, sending a plume of ash into the sky. The area is a popular tourist hotspot for international travellers, but anyone who has travelled there to see the impressive volcano is out of luck as officials have warned people to stay away. When the volcano erupted, it sent ash 200 metres into the air which spread to the north and south.
The Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (PVMBG) chief Kasbani said: “The eruption was recorded on the seismogram to have a maximum amplitude of 38 milimeters with a duration of about five minutes and 30 seconds.”
While the alert level surrounding Mount Tangkuban Parahu, which is one of 129 volcanos in Indonesia, have returned to level one, authorities are warning the latest eruption could be a sign of something bigger which is to come.
Karbani said: “A phreatic eruption could happen at any time without any clear volcanic signals.”
Indonesia is incredibly prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity because of its proximity to the Ring of Fire.
The Ring of Fire is a series of fragile fault lines that stretch from New Zealand, all around the east coast of Asia, over to Canada and the USA.
They then stretch all the way down to the southern tip of South America.
Indonesia is the single densest and most active volcanic region in the world.
Volcano Discovery said: “Indonesia leads the world in many volcano statistics.
“It has the largest number of historically active volcanoes (76), its total of 1,171 dated eruptions is only narrowly exceeded by Japan’s 1,274, although not much is know about the volcanic activity in the time before European colonialists arrived from the 15th century on.
“Indonesia has suffered the highest numbers of eruptions producing fatalities, damage to arable land, mudflows, tsunamis, domes, and pyroclastic flows.”
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