JAKARTA: Three hikers, including two Singaporeans, have died following the eruption of the Mount Dukono volcano on Halmahera island in North Maluku, Indonesia, local police have said.
“The latest information is that there are three fatalities, two of them are foreign citizens from Singapore. The other one is a Ternate resident,” North Halmahera Police Chief Erlichson Pasaribu told TV outlet KompasTV on May 8, referring to a city in North Maluku.
Pasaribu said 20 hikers had been on the mountain when it erupted, including nine foreigners. The remaining seven foreigners had safely come down from the mountain as of 2pm local time.
He added that the bodies of the three victims had yet to be retrieved from the mountain, as eruptions were still ongoing.
Head of local rescue agency Iwan Ramdani told Reuters that nine of the hikers are Singaporean and the rest are Indonesians. He added that the agency has deployed dozens of personnel, including police, to search for the 20 hikers trapped by the eruption.
Indonesia’s national search and rescue agency Basarnas said it first received an emergency alert at about 8.55am local time after a distress signal was detected from a Garmin device near the volcano.
The signal was later confirmed by the head of Mamuya village in North Halmahera, according to a statement from the Ternate Search and Rescue Office
Iwan said rescuers from the Tobelo search-and-rescue post, based in the North Halmahera town closest to Mount Dukono, were deployed shortly after receiving the report, together with police, military personnel and local residents.
According to information from the the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), the volcano first started erupting at 7.41am. Mount Dukono has been put on Level 2 alert status, which indicates heightened volcanic activity, since March 29.
Pasaribu said that hikers had been warned away from the mountain since then, but some hikers had still gone up the mountain despite the risks.
Basarnas said information gathered from survivors indicated that 15 hikers had been evacuated to safety. The identities and conditions of the hikers were still being verified as rescue operations continued.
The agency added that evacuation efforts were being hampered by difficult terrain, volcanic ash exposure and the risk of further eruptive material being ejected from the volcano.
Concerns about safety on Mount Dukono had resurfaced after videos from an April 6 eruption went viral online. The footage showed hikers near the crater scrambling for safety as ash and debris shot into the air.
In the videos, local guides could be heard shouting at hikers not to run downhill. “Don’t go down, come up! Up, up, up,” one guide yelled, as some trekkers panicked and tried to descend the slope.
Reports at the time said guides believed remaining higher up was safer than moving into the path of ash, debris and volcanic gases travelling downslope.
Mount Dukono is among Indonesia’s most active volcanoes and has been erupting almost continuously for decades, with the authorities maintaining exclusion zones around the crater because of the risk of sudden eruptions. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
