JAVA ERUPTION

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXVIII, Issue LXXVIII, 25 July 1919, Page 3

JAVA ERUPTION

♦ TOWN OVERWHELMED BY LAVA. TERKIFIED PEOPLE ESCAPE TO HILLS. The mountain of Kloot, in the island of Java, has long had an evil reputation. It erupts at periods varying from JO to 15 years, hufc as there is no certainty as to the nature of any particular eruption or the direction in which the lava will flow the natives ding tenaciously to their little homes, and even when they are destroyed in an eruption they insist on returning to their old homesteads. "This instinctive love of home," said Mr Percy Wallace Rairden. special assistant to the Department "of Stite American Consulate, Batavia, Java, in the course of an interview w,ith a Herald representative, "was the cause of the alarming lo,s s of life in the eruption which took place in May last. The people had swarmed back to their homesteads since the last lava flow, and, though Kloet gave out a number of ominous rumblings some days prior to the actual eruption, the natives remained indifferent. But even the Europeans «-_ere caught by the lava flow, so rapidly did it come at last. "Sines the previous eruption a train has always' been kept in readiness- to take the Europeans out of danger when the warning signal was given, but this train was actually caught and overwhelmed in the burning lava, a nd had 10 b* dug out some days subsequently. Ihe town of Blitar was literally obliterated by two streams of lava that encircled it. So rapidly did the lava come "bat a warning message, sent by telephone from a signal station some distance up the mountain, reached Blitar less than & Ye minutes before the overpowenng Java streams. "During the eruption in 1909 the lava dus-i fel- copiously in Batavia. nearly 000. miles away, but there was then a strong wind, and the lava was in the nature of hot burning ashes as fine as powder. Ihe effects of the May erupTVS f? }t a6 far" Diokdjakarta, about 200 miles away, and the home of the residency and the old temples of •Java, Before the eruption there was a iairly large lake on the ton at one s.c c ox Kioet, and this eruption practically took the entire lake away and the boiling water, mixing with the lava tornied a solution of burning matter &s sticky as cement, and rolling forward with enormous force it simply overwhelmed everything m its path The majority of the European houses, built of brick or-stone, withstood the impact ant everything up to .six or eight-, feet was destroyed, and it was many days before this solid sticky matter could be cleared away. "The native houses built largely of bamooos were ..simply rolled over 'and everything they contained completely destroyed. The town of Blitar nominally contained about 25,000 persons, and practically all these were rendered homeless, as well as several thousands ol inhabitants of the villages, in the course of the flow. ~n'n£ cw giua- f st: mate wa« tllat over eO,OOO had' perished, but later calculations showed this was a serious miscalculation. It was accounted for by the tact that the people took to the' hills and any place where they considered there was safety, and.it was nearly a wonth before the actual survivors Were tabulated, and even then th e rescue othfiiaJs were uncertain whether many snonld be .tabulated ,as dead oi\ only TO.ng, uf s certain that at least 10,----<*X> people perished, possibly 15,000, belorSnlT W * "Relief funds were immediately organised m Java, and substantial amounts were cabled from Holland, and the Government officials did all they possibly could to relieve the distresT Jwi&neers and soldiers, in charge of aative workers, are .still clearW axvav the debris and providing temporary shelter for the people, and, added Mr Kairden, «g nc h » the tenacity of he people and their fatalism that many are 5S 6ngagf in the re-erecS <rf : shant ieß on their old homesteads, and vmiTwill htar and its ™™ding village will be reconstructed, and in n 'It was fortunate there ar e two deen ravines outride Blitar, whiSi teofc* SSS"^ °^the aPP™^hing K qu id de'Wtion J WISe the IOSS ! wa^hat^ OhH fr tUre °f the «as that, whilst it occurred ai 2 o'clock m the .morning, and actually lSted about an hW, with five sepLa c explosions at intervals, the whole dis met BhTar \ vas ™ De d in darkness unti 2 o'clock the following fef ?T7 WhlCh f dGd to tLe dfficS Thl Wn angerß^ f .^tempted rescues, ihe burning or boiling steam, in its mam flow, varied from six to eight feet m depth, and those caught in it were either memerated or scalded to death »