Sinabung volcano expels 4,500-meter ash cloud in Indonesia
Jakarta, Aug 10 (efe-epa).- The Sinabung volcano erupted Monday in Indonesian and expelled an ash cloud of about 4,500 meters high that fell on several populated mountainside areas, authorities said.
The Indonesian Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation reported no deaths or injuries and recommended establishing a security perimeter of up to 5 kilometers around the crater due to the risk of a magma eruption.
The ash expelled by the volcano, in the north of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, has reached populations up to 20 kilometers away.
The eruption which preceded another one over the weekend that expelled ash up to 1,000 meters high and forced a flight alert to be issued by air authorities to avoid traffic over the crater, happened at around 10:00 in the morning local time (03:00 GMT).
The intermittent eruptions of Sinabung, 2,460 meters high and one of the most active in the country, caused 16 deaths in 2014 and seven in 2016, despite never having exceeded grade 3 (on a scale of 8) on the Volcanic Explosivity Index.
The Indonesian archipelago sits within the so-called “Ring of Fire” of the Pacific, an area of ??great seismic activity with 127 active volcanoes and which is shaken by thousands of tremors a year, most of them of low magnitude. EFE-EPA
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