[imagesource:wonderai]

The bodies of 11 hikers were discovered near the crater of Indonesia’s Marapi volcano following after it erupted on Sunday.

There were a total of 75 hikers in and around the crater of the volcano, with 12 people still missing. Search and rescue teams have however been halted after a ‘small eruption’ occurred on Monday, but they managed to bring another three people to safety.

Mount Marapi, located on Indonesia’s westernmost Sumatra island, experienced the eruption after an initial smaller one in January.

A 3,000-metre-high cloud of volcanic ash spread across the sky on Sunday night, covering villages, cars and roads, with local authorities imposing the ‘second-highest alert level’ and warning people to not come closer than three kilometres from the crater.

Rescue personnel took turns bringing the dead and injured down the mountain’s difficult terrain, some suffering from burns as a result of the extreme heat. Jodi Haryawan, spokesperson for the local search and rescue team, told reporters that it would be “too dangerous to continue searching while the volcano was erupting”.

Mount Marapi sits on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, where the meeting of continental plates causes high volcanic and seismic activity, and has been known to erupt from time to time. In June 2018 it also spewed ash into the sky, with a YouTuber managing to catch the eruption on film from neighbouring Mount Merbabu.

In light of the lives lost this weekend, the video is eery with Ring of Fire being played on a ukulele, so turn down the volume.

[source:bbc]