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Volcanic Eruption Sends Ash Plume 650 Feet Into The Air

   DailyWire.com

On Friday afternoon, a volcano in southern Indonesia erupted, spewing ash as high as 650 feet into the air, according to the country’s National Board for Disaster Management.

The ash from the eruption of Mount Tangkuban Parahu landed as far as 6,500 feet away, reports ABC.

The volcano is situated approximately 18.6 miles north of Indonesia’s third largest city of Bandung in West Java. As of publication, no casualties have been disclosed. However, 9News reports that two individuals were taken to the hospital with “breathing difficulties.”

According to authorities, there were only about 100 people nearby, which led to a swift evacuation effort.

Photos and videos showing the aftermath of the eruption have flooded social media:

​Popular with tourists, Mount Tangkuban Perahu near Bandung has erupted. Ash rains down.

The eruption of Mount Tangkuban Parahu comes just a month and a half after another Indonesian volcano, Mount Sinabung, sent plumes of ash into the skies above North Sumatra, about 56 miles southwest of the city of Medan. Although that eruption sent ash approximately 4.3 miles into the air, no casualties were reported.

These eruptions took place 1,300 miles apart.

Indonesia is infamously settled along the “Ring of Fire,” or Circum-Pacific Belt, a 24,900 mile horseshoe of seismic activity that stretches from New Zealand to Japan, the Philippines, Peru, Chile, and the entire western seaboard of the United States.

According to Britannica, roughly “75% of the world’s volcanoes occur within the Ring of Fire.”

The encyclopedia adds that “the Ring of Fire has been the setting for several of the largest earthquakes in recorded history, including the Chile earthquake of 1960, the Alaska earthquake of 1964, the Chile earthquake of 2010, and the Japan earthquake of 2011, as well as the earthquake that produced the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004.”

The Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, which was caused by an 9.1 magnitude undersea earthquake near the northern tip of Sumatra, led to the deaths of as many as 230,000 people.

Indonesia has a history of deadly volcanic eruptions. In 1815, the eruption of Mount Tambora killed at least 100,000 people, according to History. In 1822, Mount Galunggung erupted, killing 4,000.

In 1883, Krakatoa’s eruption killed about 36,000. In 1919, the Kelut eruption killed 5,000. In 1963, Mount Agung erupted, leaving between 1,100 and 1,900 people dead. According to Geology, “The 1963-1964 eruption at Mount Agung was one of the largest volcanic eruptions of the 20th Century.”

In 2010, the eruption of Mount Merapi killed approximately 347 people. More recently, in December 2018, the Anak Krakatau eruption and subsequent tsunami killed roughly 429 people.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that there are “1,500 potentially active volcanoes worldwide.” The National Museum of Natural History’s Global Volcanism Program places Indonesia in third for countries with the most volcanoes (139) – behind Russia at number two, and the United States at number one.

This will not be Indonesia’s last encounter with a deadly volcano. While there were no casualties this time, the next round of activity may prove deadly.

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