Tuesday saw a rush of hundreds of Indonesian rescuers searching for twelve hikers who vanished following the deaths of eleven persons due to a volcano explosion.
On the Sumatra island, the bodies of the hikers were discovered on Monday close to Mount Marapi’s crater. Those who survived the grueling rescue operations that were hindered by more eruptions and inclement weather were found farther on the mountain.
On Sunday, the volcano erupted a tower of ash 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) high, higher than the volcano itself.
“This morning we will deploy around 200 personnel, on top of the personnel who are already staying up there. Until now five bodies have been brought down,” Hendri, head of operations at the Padang Search and Rescue Agency, told AFP Tuesday.
“The volcano is still erupting,” said the official, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.
He said the 12 hikers remained missing as of Tuesday morning and six dead bodies were still to be evacuated, with five brought down the mountain for identification.
The rescuers would attempt manual evacuations when possible, walking to the top of the volcano and evacuating the victims using stretchers because of ongoing eruptions and poor visibility, Hendri said.
Ahmad Rifandi, head of Marapi’s monitoring post, told AFP Tuesday it had observed five eruptions from midnight to 8 am local time (0100 GMT).
“Marapi is still very much active. We can’t see the height of the column because it’s covered by the cloud,” he said.
Three hikers were found alive on the mountain following the eruption; they were hurt, but were transferred to a hospital for treatment, according to Abdul Malik, the chief of the Padang Search and Rescue Agency, who spoke to media on Monday.
Since 2011, Marapi has been on the second level of a four-tier alert system, according to Hendra Gunawan, the head of Indonesia’s volcanology agency, and a three-kilometer exclusion zone has been established around its crater.
As he emphasized that “severe impacts” were reported for victims within one to 1.5 kilometers from the crater, he seemed to be blaming hikers on Monday for straying too near to the crater and claimed the agency recommended no human activities in that zone.
