Drone worth IDR600 million lost flying over Mount Agung

Mt. Agung. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Mt. Agung. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

A very expensive drone was lost flying over the crater of Bali’s rumbling Mount Agung on Tuesday evening.

The signal was lost for the AI 450 drone, worth IDR600 million (US$45,000), when it was sent up to survey the Bali volcano at 10pm.

Things had apparently been going smoothly until a gust of strong wind came through. The drone had automatically turned back, but on its way home it was knocked down, with coordinates indicating the fall happened 300 meters from the volcano crater, at an altitude of 2,854 meters.

“The drone lost contact when it came down, because of the weather. As it was coming down, wind knocked it around. The wind power was pretty high, slamming the drone upside down,” said Aeroterrascan team flight director, Seno Sahisnu, as quoted by Tribun Bali.

The drone had been carrying a multi-gas sensor to take gas samples at the crater, said Sahisnu.

Yesterday had been the AI 450 drone’s third flight of 2018.

If found (though there shouldn’t exactly be people hiking up Agung right now), please return the drone to the nearest volcano monitoring post, tweeted Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman for Indonesia’s Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB).

Senior volcanologist Devy Kamil Syahbana at the Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation Center (PVMBG) says that with the drone of out play, another method will have to be used to take those gas samples which can give insight into Agung’s activity.

The issue has been communicated with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) says Kamil.

“USGS will send the latest tools, but it will be awhile,” he said.

This isn’t the first time PVMBG has had drone issues. A drone had a rough takeoff on its second day of service in October 2017, leading superstitious residents to believe that the volcano was rejecting the ‘impure’ object.

Mount Agung remains at the highest alert “danger,” level IV, where it’s been since Nov. 27, 2017 after stirring back to life in August 2017 for the first time since the 1963 eruption.

The alert refers to the threat of danger in the exclusion zone, currently set at a six kilometer radius from the volcano’s crater.

The volcano’s most recent activity was a string of four consecutive eruptions early on Tuesday morning.



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