Indonesia: Authorities expand search for tsunami victims

Officially, on the morning of December 25, Indonesia's authorities reported at least 429 dead and 1,400 injured victims of the December 22 tsunami. However, this number is likely to represent only an intermediate level: according to official figures at least 154 people are missing.

All of this applies only to the regions that authorities and aid organizations have been able to overlook. The recent increase in casualties is also explained by the fact that the search for victims has been extended to remote regions in the past 24 hours, which were previously thought to be unaffected. Now it turns out: There were many victims there as well. The impact of the tsunami, which hit the islands of Sumatra and Java last Saturday around 9:03 pm (local time, 3:03 pm CET) without warning, is far from complete.

Meanwhile, the volcano Anak Krakatau, whose outbreak triggered the tsunami, continues to spit fire and high ash clouds. The civil protection authorities have extended the warning about the possibility of high tides until Wednesday. Thousands of Indonesians were urged to continue only on a higher ground. According to Hermann Fritz, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, but also a tsunami danger exists: "Since the Anak Krakatau has been actively erupting for months, further tsunami can not be ruled out."

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Hardly any other nation in the world has more experience of the effects of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis than Indonesia: the state of 17,508 islands with its 255 million inhabitants is located in one of the most active zones of the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire. This refers to the marginal zones of the Pacific continental plate, on the eastern, northern and western edges of which are the most active zones of volcanic and plate tectonic activity of the earth.

In Indonesia, it is above all the northeastern islands that directly touch the Ring of Fire: here are at least 41 active volcanoes, three of which are currently breaking out.

The fact that in all this experience on 22 December the warning systems failed and a warning of the population was omitted, was due to the emergence of the tsunami: Usually tsunami waves pile up especially after strong seaquake, but not after "normal" volcanic eruptions. The current eruption of Anak Krakatau, however, triggered an initially undetected landslide under the water surface that caused the tsunami. The up to three-meter high tidal wave hit the two affected Indonesian islands just 24 minutes later.

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Krakatoa is one of the most notorious volcanoes in the world. In 1883 it literally exploded, killing an estimated 36,000 people and providing Earth with a roughly two-year period of small-scale climate change, with cold spells and crop failures. The explosion was so violent that it was audible over several thousand kilometers, its blast causing damage at a distance of 130 kilometers. At the end of the eruption, the 813 meter high volcano had completely disappeared and the island on which it stood was torn into several pieces.

On December 22, Anak Krakatau, the "child of the Krakatau", set out: the young volcano is the next incarnation of the fire mountain, which from 1927 was again high enough to pierce the surface of the water. Meanwhile, he has grown back to a height of 338 meters. The ever-widening Krakatau Island is located in the Sunda Strait, directly between Sumatra and Java.

The Krakatau eruption is considered the second worst volcanic eruption of modern times - after the explosion of Tambora, which is 1400 kilometers east on the Indonesian island of Sumbawe. In 2018, the Smithonian Institution's Volcano Observatory registered a total of nine major volcanic eruptions in Indonesia and three tsunami victims. The tsunami in September 2018, which killed 2,256 people on Sulawesi, was caused by a seaquake.