Indonesia's Lewotobi Laki-Laki volcano erupts, forcing evacuations and flight cancellations

# Indonesia's Lewotobi Laki-Laki volcano erupts, forcing evacuations and flight cancellations

Event date: 2025-03-21

Indonesia's Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki erupted on Flores, sending an ash column more than 8,000 meters into the air and prompting evacuations in the surrounding area, according to the supplied DW report. The volcano began erupting on Thursday evening and remained active into Friday, with thick gray clouds still rising from the crater. The immediate effect was disruption on the island and well beyond it.

The eruption also hit air travel. Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport said seven international flights were canceled by Friday morning, six of them Jetstar flights bound for Australia and one AirAsia flight to Kuala Lumpur. Because Bali sits nearly 800 kilometers away from Flores, the cancellations show how far volcanic ash can travel and how quickly airlines will respond when flight safety is at stake.

Authorities raised the alert to the highest level and set an exclusion zone between seven and eight kilometers around the volcano. Indonesia's disaster management agency said the local government had declared a 14-day emergency and that more than 4,700 residents had already been evacuated. That is a large-scale response for a single eruption, but it reflects the risk posed when ash, rain and unstable terrain overlap.

The report says some workers on a plantation were burned by falling ash, and officials warned residents to stay alert for heavy rain that could turn ash into volcanic mudslides. The eruption came only months after a November blast from the same volcano killed nine people and injured dozens more. That history adds urgency to the response because this is not the first time the mountain has turned dangerous.

Indonesia is home to nearly 130 active volcanoes and sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, so eruptions are a recurring part of life there. Even so, each event can still produce a sharp regional shock when it reaches settlements and air routes at the same time. The verified facts here are clear: the volcano erupted, thousands were evacuated, and flights were grounded while authorities widened the safety perimeter.

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