Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung erupts, ash plume reaches 3.5km

The Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation reported that the ash rose roughly 1 kilometer above the volcano’s summit, reaching 3,460 meters in altitude. Dense gray ash drifted east and southeast. Officials urged residents and tourists to stay at least three kilometers away from the crater and warned of possible lava flows along nearby rivers.

Sinabung, an active volcano standing 2,460 meters high, erupted in 2010 for the first time in 400 years. A 2014 eruption killed 16 people, while seven died during renewed activity in 2016.

Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelagic state comprising 18,000 islands, lies within the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a zone of intense seismic activity. The country has more than 500 volcanoes, around 130 of them active.

Earlier, it was reported that the Klyuchevskoy volcano in Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula had sent an ash column up to 6 kilometers above sea level, with the resulting ash plume stretching 130 kilometers east of the volcano.