MAGUWOHARJO, Indonesia - Mount Merapi, after dozens of blasts and weeks of disruptions and disaster to the people of Indonesia, has not finished causing turmoil. On Friday, and explosion of hot gases sent 160,00 villagers to areas to underprepared evacuation camps which created chaos among the disaster relief. This new explosion will now cause that stress and chaos to rise even more, and will continue to raise the death toll. "At least 64 people were killed by the latest eruption, which was by far the largest since the volcano on central Java Island started spewing ash and gas on Oct. 26" (New York Times).
In class we dicussed some of the problems with volcanoes, especially in terms of environmental disaster mitigation and discovered that there are not many opporunities to prevent volcanoes from happening. There are ways scientists can monitor and warn people of volcanic activity, through various tools such as measuring seismic waves, but all in all it is important to have prepared evacuation sites and community awareness. This seems to be the major problem with the Indonesian eruption. Not only is the volcano not letting up, but disaster aid and preparedness is low increasing the death toll.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/06/world/asia/06indo.html?_r=1&hp
Slideshow of the Volcanoes Devastation
No comments:
Post a Comment