Ash-covered woman in Indonesian volcano eruption begs for help
A young woman caught in the aftermath of a volcano eruption has begged for her mother to rescue her in a chilling video message.
“Mum, help,” a young woman, her burnt face smeared with thick grey ash, pleads in a recorded video message.
That young woman is Zhafirah Zahrim Febrina, 19, who was hiking with 18 student friends when a volcano in Indonesia erupted.
Ms Febrina recorded the message as she waited in agony for rescue crews.
She is one of the lucky ones after 11 hikers were found dead on Monday and another 12 were missing.
Rescuers worked through the night to find dozens of hikers stranded on Mount Marapi on the island of Sumatra after it spewed an ash tower 3000m – taller than the volcano itself – into the sky on Sunday.
Ms Febrina is being treated at a hospital in Padang Panjang, in western Sumatra. She suffered burns and was visibly shaken, but her mother Rani Radelani said she felt relieved.
“She is going through a tremendous trauma,” she said.
“She is affected psychologically because she saw her burns, and she also had to endure the pain all night.”
Officials say 11 hikers died in the explosion and dozens have been injured.
So far 49 people, most of them hikers, have been evacuated on Monday after a night on the mountain.
According to rescuers, the dead and injured were close to the crater when it erupted.
Twelve people are still missing, with others are waiting on the mountain to be brought down.
The search was temporarily suspended after a smaller eruption on Monday.
“They are being carried down manually, rescuers are taking turns bringing them down,” Abdul Malik, head of the local government rescue agency, told Agence France-Presse.
“We can’t do an air search with a helicopter because the eruption is continuing.”
The 2911m volcano rises dramatically out of a landscape of paddy fields. Sunday’s eruption sent a column of ash, about 3000m high, into the sky.
Indonesia is in one of the most seismically active regions of the world, with frequent earthquakes and 127 active volcanoes.
Marapi is one of several volcanoes in the Pacific basin known as the Ring of Fire.
It is the most active on the island of Sumatra, and it erupted, on a smaller scale, as recently as March, although no injuries were reported.
About 1400 people live on the slopes of the volcano, with the nearest villages less than 5000m from the peak.
Marapi was at the third-highest alert level when the eruption occurred and it was reported that the authorities had been monitoring the volcano in recent weeks after sensors detected increasing activity.
In 1979, huge eruptions at Marapi caused 60 deaths, with another 19 people killed by landslides.
— with AFP
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