Despite warnings by officials in Indonesia of a possible eruption soon by Mount Kelud, thousands of people living within the six-mile danger zone of the volcano are staying put.
The imminent eruption warning was issued on Tuesday following weeks of monitoring tremors and temperatures in the southeast Asia volcano.
Some villagers had evacuated at first, but are returning to their homes complaining that there isn’t enough food at the emergency shelters that were set up to handle the evacuees.
The warning is calling for people to stay at least six miles away from Mt. Kelud. It last erupted in 1990, with about a dozen people perishing. An eruption in 1919 killed about 5,000 people.
Volcano experts credit modern warning systems for helping keep the death tolls much lower, as long as people living in the affected area evacuate. Historians say that an eruption at the same volcano in the 16th century took an estimated 10,000 lives.
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With the erruption of another Volcano close to Kelud and a 7.1 Earthquake in the area, will this take pressure off Kelud errupting ?
How would these village people in a third-world nation be able to afford staying away from their homes for any amount of time? They may very well have some dependence on seasonal resources or even derive their livelihood from natural and seasonal resources and thus missing any period of time could be devastating. They don't have the money to hole up in a hotel and eat take-out until it happens. Advanced warning systems are great, in the first-world. Unfortunately for the poor we tend to only problem-solve for the rich.
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