The latest from Lusi
It’s been some time since I last checked in on Lusi, the mad-made mud volcano, but this account of conditions on the ground in the Christian Science Monitor prompted me to check out the latest satellite images. The picture on the left below is from early June this year (follow the link to the University of Singapore’s Centre for Remote Imaging, Sensing and Processing for access to a larger image), which I used in my last update; on the right is the most recent shot, taken on the 22nd November.
From this elevated perspective, it appears that the earth dams thrown up by the Indonesian authorities have become much more substantial, and are now managing to contain the outflow of hot mud to a certain extent; from the colour of the river it looks like much of the tens of thousands of cubic metres being erupted every day is being diverted into it. This is hardly ideal, because as the Monitor article makes clear, this is not pleasant stuff:
The mud, which contains heavy metals and chemicals such as benzene and sulfur dioxide, has also contaminated rivers and wells in a city-sized area that was semi-industrial farmland and a shrimp production zone.
As for the 16,000 people who have been displaced, almost certainly permanently, by the eruption, they’re currently fighting for an improvement on a rather derisory compensation offer of 20% of the value of their buried homes (the rest will allegedly be paid at some later date).
Categories: geohazards, Lusi
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