Indonesia’s remote Mount Ruang volcano erupted several times on Tuesday, authorities said, issuing the highest level of alert and ordering thousands of people to evacuate due to the threat of a tsunami from debris sliding into the sea.
The country’s volcanology agency had warned the threat from the volcano was not over after it erupted more than half a dozen times this month, sparking the evacuation of more than 6,000 people.
Ruang, located in Indonesia’s North Sulawesi province, erupted at around 1:15 a.m. local time and then twice more that morning, the volcanology agency said in a statement.
The volcano sent a tower of ash more than five kilometers into the sky, it added, as well as a fiery column of lava.
The national disaster agency BNPB estimated 11,000 to 12,000 people had to be relocated from near Ruang’s crater, spokesman Abdul Muhari told a press conference.
“Currently local disaster mitigation agency… military and police are evacuating residents,” he said.
Images released by the agency showed a molten red column bursting into the sky, a large ash cloud spilling from the crater and burning embers near local houses.
The disaster agency imposed a seven-kilometer exclusion zone around Ruang after volcanology officials warned locals of “the potential for ejections of incandescent rocks, hot clouds and tsunamis due to eruption material entering the sea.”