Indonesian authorities are asking people near an island volcano to avoid the coast while eruptions and weather and sea conditions are monitored for tsunami risks. A tsunami that followed an eruption of Anak Krakatoa hit communities along the Sunda Strait on Saturday night, killing more than 420 people and displacing thousands.
Residents were asked to stay at least 1,640 feet from the Sunda Strait coastline, said Dwikorita Karnawati, the head of Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency. She said high waves and heavy rains are possible Wednesday and the wall of the volcano’s crater is prone to collapse.
At a news conference late Tuesday, Karnawati said weather and continuing eruptions “could potentially cause landslides at the cliffs of the crater into the sea, and we fear that that could trigger a tsunami.”
Indonesia, a vast archipelago of more than 17,000 islands and home to 260 million people, lies along the Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin.
The massive eruption of Krakatoa killed more than 30,000 people and hurled so much ash that it turned day to night in the area and reduced global temperatures. Thousands were believed killed by a quake and tsunami that hit Sulawesi island in September, and an earlier quake on the island of Lombok killed 505 people in August.
