Word: merapi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Indonesian province of Central Java is charged with mysticism: animist spirits, Hindu gods, Sufi saints. One of the most sacred sites is a magnificent 3,000-m peak called Merapi, which literally means "fire mountain." For centuries villagers living on its slopes and base have pledged their fate to Merapi, not just because it's an active volcano but because it provides fertile soil for them to grow food and raise cattle, and sand and stone for them to build their homes. Every year they bring Merapi gifts of food, tobacco and clothing, both to appease it and to seek...
...recent weeks Merapi has been showing its uncharitable side. A series of small eruptions has darkened the sky with hot clouds of gas, raining ash on the fields below, and discharging streams of lava down the mountain. By last Saturday, the dome remained intact, but threatened to blow at any time. "We are still at the highest alert status," says Subandrio, director of the Merapi-observation division of Indonesia's Center of Volcanological Research and Technology in Yogyakarta. "An explosion is still very possible...
...When Merapi last erupted 12 years ago, 60 people were scorched to death by 300?C smoke. And since the tsunami of Dec. 26, 2004, which claimed 170,000 Indonesian lives, the government has been especially wary of the toll that can be inflicted by natural disasters. So the authorities have built dams to block the lava, set up evacuation routes, taught villagers to build bunkers, and transferred 20,000 people to makeshift shelters at least 8 km away...
Wahid didn't need a soothsayer to read the rumbles of Merapi: he only had to look as far as Jakarta's parliament for the source of his woes. While thousands of demonstrators?some for Wahid, but most against him?bellowed at one another under a torrential downpour, the scene inside parliament was solidly against the President. His opponents and fairweather political allies censured Wahid last Thursday for his alleged involvement in two corruption scandals, involving a total of more than $6 million. That may seem like small change compared with the billions that vanished from government coffers during...
Javanese rulers have long gazed upon an eruption of Mount Merapi as an omen of troubled times ahead. So when the central Java volcano began sputtering and oozing lava early last week, many Indonesians recognized a portent of ill tidings for President Abdurrahman Wahid, the nearly blind 60-year-old Muslim cleric who has fitfully governed the country for the past 15 months...