Three hikers killed, others rescued after volcano erupts in Indonesia's Mount Dukono

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - JAKARTA — A volcanic eruption killed three people and triggered a rescue operation to get more than a dozen hikers stranded near the crater of Indonesia’s Mount Dukono to safety Friday morning, officials said.

The eruption on Halmahera island sent an ash cloud about 10 kilometers into the air, with no towns of villages near enough to face any immediate threat.

Two Singapore nationals and an Indonesian citizen were among those killed when the volcano on the island of Halmahera in North Maluku province erupted, according to officials.

Twenty hikers — nine foreigners and 11 Indonesian — were on the slopes when disaster struck, North Halmahera police chief Erlichson Pasaribu told reporters at a volcano monitoring station in Mamuya village. All surviving climbers had descended the mountain successfully, he added late Friday afternoon.

The national search and rescue authority BASARNAS has not yet confirmed the deaths or nationalities.

The bodies of the deceased were still on the mountain, he added, without elaborating on the whereabouts of the last two hikers.

“Due to ongoing eruptions, the situation is still considered unsafe for evacuation. So, the joint team is still waiting for the right time to begin the search,” Pasaribu said.

Some of the hikers had suffered minor injuries and were taken to hospital for treatment.

The group’s guide and a porter were taken to the police station and could face criminal charges for taking hikers into a prohibited area, said the police chief.

Since December, the Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (PVMBG) has warned tourists and climbers not to come within four kilometers of the volcano’s Malupang Warirang Crater after scientists spotted an uptick in seismic activity.

Pasaribu said the hikers had ignored social media appeals and warning signs put up at the entrance of the trail to stay away.

“Local residents understand and don’t want to climb. Many (hikers) are foreign tourists who wish to create (social media) content,” he said.

Lana Saria, head of the government Geology Agency, said Friday’s eruption was accompanied by a “booming sound” and a thick column of ash and smoke rising 10 kilometers from the summit of Mount Dukono.

“The direction of the ash distribution leans northward, so residential areas and Tobelo City need to be vigilant for... volcanic ash rain,” she said in a statement.

The smoke could be dangerous for public health, Lana added, and risked disrupting transportation services.

A huge column of smoke and ash can be seen rising above the mountain in dramatic video from near the crater recorded by Alex Djangu, an Indonesian mountain guide.

Djangu was guiding two German tourists on Mount Dukono when he felt deep tremors before the eruption, saying it was “very scary.”

“I saw the small rocks and gravel sliding down because of the tremors, then I told my clients we have to run down,” he said.

While Djangu and his group were able to safely evacuate, he said many hikers remained at the crater at the time of the eruption.

“When we were about 100 meters away, I saw two groups of local tourists, one group of nine people already close to the rim and the other were videoing for content.”

The volcano, he said, is highly active and continued to erupt into Friday afternoon “with supersonic sound.”

“When Mount Dukono does not erupt for several days, people need to be careful because it may be building up very high pressure. And that is what happened today,” Djangu said.

Indonesia, a vast archipelago nation, experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire” where tectonic plates collide.

One of the most seismically active zones on the planet, the Ring of Fire” — a band around the Pacific Ocean where earthquakes and volcanic activity frequently occur — stretches from Japan and Indonesia on one side of the Pacific to California and South America on the other.