Flights to Bali cancelled after volcanic eruption in Indonesia

Euronews

10 hours ago

Flights have been cancelled in Indonesia after a volcano erupted, releasing a massive cloud of ash.
An eruption from Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki on Tuesday afternoon sent a thick grey plume up 10,000 metres into the sky, creating a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as far as 150 kilometres away. Several more eruptions on Tuesday evening sent ash up 5,000 metres into the sky.
It erupted again on Wednesday morning, belching a 1,000 metre high ash cloud, according to Indonesia's volcanology institute, which has raised the alert to the highest level. The danger zone where people are recommended to leave has been expanded to 8 kilometres from the crater.
But, ash and debris fell in a number of places outside of the danger zone, including the villages of Boru, Hewa and Watobuku. Some residents from Nurabelen village in Ile Bura subdistrict fled to evacuation sites in Konga to avoid the impact of the eruption, the National Disaster Management Agency said in a statement.
No casualties have been reported.
More than 20 flights have been cancelled following the eruption, including services connecting Bali to Australia, Malaysia, India and China, according to the website of Bali's I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport.
Singapore Airlines cancelled four flights between Bali's Denpasar airport and Singapore. Its budget subsidiary, Scoot, has cancelled flights to Bali and the neighbouring island of Lombok.
Low-cost carrier JetStar cancelled several morning flights from Australia to Bali, and some afternoon flights were delayed or cancelled.
Air New Zealand, Juneyao Airlines and Virgin Australia have also cancelled some flights to Bali.
The Fransiskus Xaverius Seda airport in Maumere is closed from Wednesday until Thursday "to ensure the safety of the passengers," according to an Instagram post from airport operator AirNav.
Thousands of passengers have been impacted by the eruption. One Air India flight was forced to return to Delhi on 18 June due to concerns over passenger safety because of the eruption, the airline said in a statement. All passengers were safely disembarked.
Jetstar said that the ash cloud was forecast to clear by Wednesday evening.
Volcanic ash clouds pose a risk to planes because they can cause severe damage to aircraft engines and affect flight controls.
When ash enters a plane engine, the glass inside it melts, which then sticks to various other engine parts. Sensors can fail, and the ash can block the thousands of tiny holes that direct air through the turbine blades to keep the engine cool.
Flying through an ash cloud is also a bit like sandblasting the outside of the plane and can reduce visibility for pilots by damaging the glass in the cockpit.
There are around 130 active volcanoes in Indonesia. The archipelago sits in between the most seismically active region of the world, the Pacific Ring of Fire, and the Alpide Belt, an area where there are a large number of eruptions and earthquakes.
Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki last erupted in May and also in March. Though people who live close to the volcano have learned to live with it, seismic activity can still be very dangerous. An eruption last November killed nine people and injured dozens more.
A group of tourists were sitting at an outdoor table in the Spanish city of Barcelona, trying to enjoy their drinks, when a woman raised a cheap plastic water gun and shot an arc of water at them.
Her weapon of choice - the cheap, squirt-squirt variety - is an increasingly common fixture at anti-tourism protests in the southern European country, where many locals fear that an overload of visitors is driving them from their cherished neighbourhoods.
How did the humble water gun become a symbol of discontent?
The phenomenon started last July, when a fringe, left-wing activist group based in Barcelona that promotes the 'degrowth' of the city's booming tourism sector held its first successful rally. Some brought water guns to shoot one another and stay cool in the summer heat.
'What happened later went viral, but in reality it was just kind of a joke by a group of people who brought water guns because it was hot," Adriana Coten, one of the organisers of Neighbourhood Assembly for Tourism Degrowth, told The Associated Press.
Then, some turned their water guns from each other to tourists. The images went around the world, becoming a publicity coup for the anti-tourism cause.
The guns reappeared in April when the same group stopped a tour bus in Barcelona, the Catalan capital.
On Sunday, around a thousand people marched from a luxury shopping boulevard popular with affluent foreigners before police stopped them from getting closer to Barcelona's top sightseeing destination: La Sagrada Familia church.
The marchers spritzed unsuspecting tourists along the way, chanting slogans and carrying protest signs. One read: 'One more tourist, one less resident!'
They left a trail of stickers on hotel doors, lampposts and outdoor café tables showing a squirting water gun encircled by a message in English: 'Tourist Go Home!'
Still, the number of Barcelona protesters carrying water guns was a minority, and in the gun-toting group, many were only shooting in the air or at each other. One dad was toting his baby in a front-pack, water gun in hand.
Outside the protests, Barcelona locals are not toting water guns or taking aim at tourists. And many in the city still support tourism, which is a pillar of the local economy.
Can the water gun really change the minds of tourists, authorities or the businesses that drive the industry? Depends on who you ask.
Protester Lourdes Sánchez and her teenage daughter, each holding a water gun, said the gun "really isn't to hurt anyone.'
'This is a symbol to say that we are fed up of how tourism industry is transforming our country into a theme park,' Sánchez said.
Another demonstrator, Andreu Martínez, acknowledged it was 'to bother the tourists a bit."
Laurens Schocher, a 46-year-old architect, said he didn't shoot any suspected tourists but hoped that carrying a water gun would bring more attention to their cause.
'I don't think the tourists will get it," he said. "I think this is to send a message to authorities.'
The marchers had no monster, pump-action water cannons that most kids use for backyard battles in the summer. Theirs were the old-school, cheap-o water guns that send a slim jet of water not that far away.
Some tourists who were sprayed took it in stride, even claiming it was refreshing on a day with temperatures pushing up to around 30 degrees Celsius.
But there were moments of tension. When several marchers squirted workers at a large hostel, tempers flared, and one worker spat at his attackers as he slammed the hostel door shut.
Nora Tsai, who had just arrived from Taiwan on a short visit, was among those spritzed on Sunday. She said she was a bit frightened and saddened. The 'Tourist go home!" chants didn't help either.
'I still like Barcelona," she said. "I have met a lot of people who were kind.'