Mount Agung’s activity has slowly increased over the past couple of weeks, with the latest rumbling, on Saturday, sending out lava a kilometer to the east of the volcano’s crater.
According to a report by local-language media outlet Nusa Bali, the eruption occurred at 2:45am and lasted for a duration of two minutes and eight seconds.
Though the mountain’s peak could not be observed by the naked eye due to 700 meter-high plumes of smoke, the glowing lava spurt was captured on CCTV (no, we don’t have the footage, sorry).
Thankfully, despite the lava flows, Saturday’s flare-up didn’t cause any bushfires on Agung’s slopes, probably due to the rainy weather.
I Dewa Made Mertha Yasa, the head of the volcano monitoring post in the Rendang area to the west of Agung, said that the outburst did not mean that we should expect a bigger eruption any time soon.
“Eruptions will still occur in the future, but on a small scale. There are no signs of a larger eruption, because the intensity of the earthquake was so small,” he commented to the source.
Agung’s alert level remains at Level 3 (standby) and the Center of Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation (PVMG) continues to warn climbers, tourists and locals against entering the hazard zone, which stretches a four-kilometer radius around Agung’s crater.
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