Volcano going off in Indonesia!

YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Indonesia ordered the immediate evacuation Saturday of thousands of people from the slopes of Mount Merapi volcano, warning of an imminent eruption as the mountain oozed fiery lava and belched clouds of black ash.
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''Because there have been constant lava flows that cause hot gases, we have raised the status to the highest level,'' said Bambang Dwiyanto, head of the region's volcanology center.

Frequent earthquakes and plumes of sulfur-laden gas indicated that Mt. Merapi was gearing up for an eruption in late April 2006. The volcano is one of Indonesia’s most active and dangerous volcanoes. The slopes of the volcano are densely populated, with four districts clustered on its flanks. As many as 80,000 people may be displaced if the volcano erupts, depending on which way the lava flows down the summit, reported the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Thousands of people who live near the volcano had been evacuated by April 27, and more were preparing to leave as the volcano continued to rumble. An eruption in 1994 claimed at least 66 lives, and a 1930 eruption killed 1,370.

Among the most serious dangers an erupting Merapi poses to the surrounding population are its characteristic pyroclastic flows and lahars. Avalanches of hot ash, gas, and rock sweep down the mountain at speeds of 100 kilometers per hour or more in a pyroclastic flow, accompanied or followed by volcanic mudflows—lahars. Pyroclastic flows and lahars have been responsible for much of the damage caused by the volcano during its long eruptive history.

Many say they are waiting for specific signs - such as clouds in the shape of a sheep's fleece - to show them an eruption is imminent.

Merpai has been intermittently and regularly active over the past century, with about 1,300 people dying in an eruption in 1930. In 1994, a wedding party of about 60 people were killed by the scorching ash and gas of a pyroclastic flow from Merapi. Six years later, Luhr visited the same village with Indonesian vulcanologists to speak with the people still living there, to explain why they should leave the area. The answer from the village elders was that they already had a solution that allowed them to remain: teams of men would run naked around the village at night to keep it safe from the fiery mountain's wrath.

I've always wondered if it wouldn't make sense to dig a channel in the side of a volcano like Merapi, while it is dormant, so that when it erupts, the lava goes where it does the least harm. But then leave it to someone to settle down in that particular spot.

I don't think volcanos are that tame...