Earth news: Earthquakes Near Merapi Volcano Kill Indonesians

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The old capital of Java was just shaken by a 6.2 earthquake, epicenter only 17.1 km deep. Yesterday, the earth was quiet as the dragon tensed its long, slanky coils and now, it shakes itself in preparation for perhaps a very loud roar. For this deadly earthquake is right smack up against Mt. Merapi. The volcanoes in this chain are famous for blowing up suddenly.

Indonesia has been shaking violently for over a year now.

BBC: Yogyakarta, Indonesia's ancient royal capital and one of its biggest cities, is about 440km (275 miles) south-east of the capital, Jakarta.

"The earthquake was felt to be massive - larger than the locals here say they've felt in their lives," said Brook Weisman-Ross, regional disaster co-ordinator for Plan International children's charity in Java.

"I was shaken from my bed... As furniture was falling, concrete chunks started falling from my hotel room as people were running out in panic in their bedclothes," he told the BBC.

He said there was extensive damage across the city and that many of the smaller, older houses had collapsed.

A witness told the Associated Press news agency he had seen three bodies under the rubble of two houses.

Reports of fatalities also came in from elsewhere.

"We have at least five people dead, but it could be more," Wahab, a nurse at Muhammadiyah hospital, told Reuters news agency by telephone.

Before other famous eruptions, earthquakes would startle surrounding communities. This is a warning sign of a major eruption. This month, the subduction zone along Indonesia's southern shores has been shaking increasingly. On May 16, a 6.8 event happened at only 1.7 km deep. We know very little about how volcanoes work, deep in the earth. We can make many guesses but they are still as mysterious as any dark, coiled dragon in its lair. We get to see them when the stretch their dark wings and spit fire and flex their tails, snapping down whole mountains.

For they do what they wish and the puny attempts of humans to imitate their ancient, dark powers makes them laugh with scorn, magic cloaks or not, no bomb can drop an entire mountain upon one's head or split the earth in molten fury. The dragons of the Heavens can annihilate all living things and even pulverize our planet. The local dragons are not to be taken lightly, either.

Here is a site that discusses the worst eruption in the last 500 years, Mt. Tambora.

Even allowing for the scant documention, the characteristic about the eruption that immediately jumps out at the researcher is its terrifying speed and brevity. When this is contrasted with its stupendous scale and effects, the event becomes a singularly sobering and daunting one. Perhaps only the Mt. Tarawera eruption of 1886 in New Zealand compares in modern times for sheer suddenness and destructive force of eruption.

A word of explanation is in order here. Though such celebrated eruptions as Krakatau, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Pelee, and more recently El Chichon and Pinatubo, capture the public eye and respect, all of those powerful eruptions had fairly lengthy eruptive sequences. In short, for those with mind to do so, there was ample time if not always means to vacate the danger zone. With Tarawera it was different---in 1886 in the space of one night a triple peak mountain range near Lake Rotomahana suddenly split open and erupted. Literally some 4,000 people who had gone to their beds that evening would never again wake up. Such a disastrous and only slightly less deadly suddenness accompanied the Tambora eruption.

Indeed, only a few centuries earlier in New Mexico, a rift in the earth opened on flat ground and let loose with a fair amount of lava. The mountains of west Tucson that rise in jagged black teeth covered with sagebrush and saguaros is a similar, older lava crack. Indonesia tends towards huge volcanoes. As they rise taller and taller, they reach this critical stage and suddenly, with scant warning, blow up.

Rotomahana's blow-up should warn us, we can't take these volcanoes lightly. They aren't tourist attractions. They are elemental forces of the deadliest level outside of cosmic powers like stars going nova.

According to the best available evidence, before the eruption Mt. Tambora was a volcanic cone 4,000 meters high and 60 kilometers in diameter at sea level; densely blanketed in forest. It is reported to have originally had two summits, and there were several parasitic cones on the east and northeast slopes. What is unusual is that studies indicate that in its first phase of activity Tambora was a shield volcano, not unlike those of Iceland or Hawaii. Later, a bedded cone was built up on top of this, possibly the result of a change in the composition of the magma.
The mountain, which may well have begun life as an island separate from Sumbawa, in time rose to dominate a peninsula joining it to Sumbawa on the southwest flank. By the time the Europeans came to occupy Sumbawa in the 18th century Mt. Tambora had lapsed into a deep dormancy. This state of affairs continued for a decade more into the 19th century. Then the volcanic energies once again burst forth.

We don't know why volcanoes "wake up" periodically. The big volcano outside Seattle, Mt. Rainier, is snoozing right now but it is anything but dormant. It is not even hibernating. It's coils go deep into the planet's mantle. And we have little idea what is going on there.

Thanks to glaciers and snowcover, any eruption of Mt. Rainier will have nasty consequences.

By AMY E. NEVALA
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

ORTING -- Mount Rainier will blow, that's a given.

When it does, a wall of mud and debris the consistency of wet concrete will come flooding down five river valleys that radiate from the mountain. The towns of Orting, Sumner, Ashford, Elbe, Packwood, Randle, Greenwater and parts of Puyallup will be in its path.

Parts of Tacoma, Buckley, Enumclaw, and to a lesser extent, South Prairie, Carbonado and Wilkeson, could also be hit by the flow.

In all, 30,000 Puyallup River Valley residents could be in direct danger from a volcanic eruption, along with 100,000 people living in the mountain's six other valleys.

Just a week ago, we had a good shake at the southern end of the California Great Rift Valley, right below the Salton Sea. Otherwise, it has been terribly quiet along the entire West Coast even as it seems the Indonesian/Indian Ocean to the outer edges of the Australian Plate have been hammered by massive, earthshaking quakes of astonishing power.

Back to the 1816 event:

The Europeans were perplexed and concerned, but some of the Java natives, however, were delighted: priests declared with confidence and satisfaction that the thunder and dark was the sign that the gods of the mountains were coming forth to free the island from foreign rule. However as the ash fall grew and persisted, while the rumblings and explosions continued, all those in-the-know now realized it must be a volcanic outbreak, and the speculation was that Merapi, Kelut, or Bromo was the likely culprit. With the cause if not the source of the disturbance identified, the Europeans at least became less concerned and ceased to pay much attention to it, for this volcanic outbreak was not yet "considered of greater importance than those which have occasionally burst forth in Java".

This educated complacency abruptly shattered on April 10. As if rebuking their hubris, as the afternoon came, suddenly the roar and detonations like blasting gravel and cannon renwed, even stronger than before, and this time a truly menacing and darkened cloud of ash billowed over from the east. This time it was even greater than before, so that the sun was almost blotted out. In the eastern part of Java, the situation was even more severe.

At Solo and Rembang some reported small and continuous earthquakes, and the explosions were tremendous, booming frequently through the 11th with such violence as to shake the houses noticeably.

Once again the priests sang with joy that liberation was at hand, and even some of the Europeans now felt fear and concern. What was happening? None of the suspected volcanoes were known to be in eruption, and yet almost 2,500 miles of island chain was being rocked by cataclysmic quakes. Not a few must have contemplated the fate of Pompeii and Herculaneum---buried by Vesuvius in AD. 79 - but there was little anyone could do but wait. These were the conditions on Java and neighboring islands as dusk approached on April 10. But for those living on the peninsula upon which Tambora stood, matters would grow much worse this night. For in the late afternoon of the 10th Mt. Tambora in fact entered paroxysmal eruption and would inflict a devastation that would leave precious few survivors to tell the tale.

It is interesting to see that the victims of the European imperial invasions hoped the dragon would destroy the invaders. Of course, these dragons don't care who they kill, they are the definition of heartless. Merapi has been active for many years. Building patiently with medium to small eruptions, people become accustomed to this and assume the dragon inhabiting this sizable cave is a small creature.

It is not! One look at the size of this dragon home and one has to shiver with fear.

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Comments

In addition to the immediate danger to people and property, consider the posibility of a volcanic winter. Read http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/evolution/ for something completely sobering.

Posted by: Shirt | May 27, 2006 at 01:27 PM