Pressure rises at Indonesian volcano

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Source: AFP News

BLITAR, Indonesia (AFP) — Pressure at a simmering Indonesian volcano on Java island escalated Friday, a geologist warned, as armed police forced some defiant villagers to evacuate ahead of a potential eruption.

Tremors rocked Mount Kelut, a 1,731-metre (5,712-foot) peak about 90 kilometres (55 miles) from Indonesia's second city of Surabaya, for nearly an hour, the top volcanologist at the monitoring station, Kristanto, told AFP.

The tremors, which cannot be felt in the area surrounding the peak, began at 0800 GMT and lasted for 50 minutes. The previous longest tremor since the volcano was put on red alert on Tuesday had lasted just 45 seconds.

"This means that the magma is trying to break through a frozen-magma layer (at the top of the volcano). We're closely monitoring whether the energy released from below will be able to break it out," he said.



Read more: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j_omVZPpJ8ttBi6bZc8Ut9eODCdw

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Further news and comments here :

Eruptions at the volcano have tended to consist of pyroclastic flows or "heat clouds" of hot air and volcanic debris that rush down the slopes and burn everything in their paths.

More than 15 000 lives have been claimed since record-keeping began of Mount Kelut's eruptions, including an estimated 10 000 in a catastrophic 1586 eruption.

A 1919 eruption spewed heat clouds that killed 5 160 people. The last eruption in 1990 left 34 people dead.

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