Tempers Cooled
Thanks to engineering ingenuity, the once feverish volcano, Gunung Kelud, has been somewhat subdued. Karl-Bernd Kaehlig explains how
Gunung Kelud is a rugged volcano in East Java situated between Malang in the east and the fertile plains of Blitar and Kediri in the west, forming part of the chain of the often active volcanoes so characteristic of Java. Though it is a smaller one with a height of 1731 m, it can be quite ill-tempered. More than 30 eruptions have been recorded so far. The volcano’s oldest record which is incidentally the oldest Indonesian one dates back to 1000 AD. In geological terms, the periods of its inactivity are very short: between 9 and 75 years. The most recent one was in 1990, destroying more than 500 houses by heavy ash fall and killing 32 people, mainly caused by collapsing roofs.
Gunung Kelud’s ill-fame is directly linked to its crater lake which has been and is still worrying the people living on the lower western slopes. In the second half of the 19th century the lake’s volume was roughly an impressive 80 million m3. When torrential rains caused the crater rim to breach at that time, in one big swoop this enormous water mass rushed down the valleys and gullies destroying all and everything in its path.
In effect, the same happened in 1919 when a brief, but very violent eruption expelled the water from the crater lake. A mix of hot volcanic ejecta together with the water formed the lahars. The term lahar is an Indonesian word for a mudflow consisting of debris and rocks of mainly volcanic origin and sometimes reaching a thickness of dozens of metres. Within one hour the 1919 mud avalanche traveled almost 40 km. The devastation was enormous: Around 15,000 hectares of arable land were made barren, at least for some time. Dozens of villages were destroyed and over 5000 people were killed. A dam built in 1905 to protect the population against such foreseen calamity proved to be utterly ineffective. It was just swept away.
So something needed to be done about it. The colonial power at that time decided to drain the crater lake the contents of which was still enormous: about 40 million m3.
Jakarta Java Kini Magazine
Add comment July 6th, 2007