Islands in Indonesia’s North Sulawesi region are on alert for a tsunami as volcano eruptions sent lava spewing and a mile-high ash cloud forms above Mount Ruang.
On Wednesday, authorities ordered thousands of people to evacuate and the volcano alert was raised to the country’s highest level after five large eruptions were recorded in one day, Indonesia’s Centre for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation said.
Indonesia, an archipelago of 270 million people, has 120 active volcanoes. It is prone to volcanic activity because it sits along the “Ring of Fire”, a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines around the Pacific Ocean.
The volcanic activity, which began late on Tuesday night and followed two earthquakes in the region, sparked fears of a repeat of the 1871 disaster when hundreds of people died in a tsunami in the days after Mount Ruang erupted.
On Wednesday morning, 800 residents fled by boat from Ruang to nearby Tagulandang. But by Wednesday night, that island was no longer considered safe either.
