Volcanic Fury

In the January 2008 National Geographic magazine there was an article titled "The Gods Must Be Restless", based on Mount Merapi, the extremely active volcano on the island of Java. During May 2006 there was a plethora of seismic activity from the volcano which lead to more than 22,000  people being ordered to evacuate from the surrounding area. The article focused on the spiritual beliefs of the people living in Kinarejo, a small village 5 kilometres to the south of Mount Merapi. The 500,000 residents of Yogyakarta  rely on Mbah Marijan, the spiritual gatekeeper to the volcano. He refused to leave his home in Kinarejo despite being ordered to evacuate by scientists, as a result hundreds of other families refused to leave the island. He was badly burned in the 2006 eruption however 2 years after the article was publish Mount Merapi exploded again. On the 26th of October 2010 Marijan refused to leave his home once more and is reported to have said to his friend that "my time to die in this place has almost come, I can't leave".




Mount Merapi, May 2006

Another reason Marijan refused to leave was because the eruption  is not so much of a danger to the residents of Yogyakarta but the expansion of "The Kingdom of Merapi". In Indonesia there are more than 30 volcanoes which inhibit the lives of Indonesians to the extent where they learn to accept them as part of everyday life. Locals depend on the mineral rich soil created by the volcano for agriculture. This collection of volcanoes are formed at the Eurasian and Indo-Australian plate boundary where the heavier Indo-Australian plate is being subducted below the Eurasian plate.




Indonesian Volcano's.

Due to the nature of the destructive plate boundary many of the volcanoes are composite cone volcanoes due to the high silica content from the oceanic crust. As a result the lava is andesitic and non viscous, this means the lava flows at a slow velocity producing a low level volcano. Krakatoa is only 813m high however it produced one of the worst recorded earthquakes of modern history. The island of Krakatau (Krakatoa) is located between Sumatra and Java. On August 26-7th 1883 a series of 4 eruptions took place which caused major destruction to the island itself. The explosions were so loud they were reportedly heard 3,110km away in Perth. It is estimated that over 30,000 were killed, both from deadly pyroclastic flow and tsunamis. Recently the Volcano has been active in several small eruptions. on the 12th of march 2013 Krakatoa produced andesite volcano bombs which left small impact craters. As the active volcano continues to grow it's next large eruption remains
unpredictable.