Indonesia's volcano watcher keeps eye on Mount Merapi (Feature)

By Ahmad Pathoni Nov 8, 2010, 5:00 GMT

Yogyakarta, Indonesia - Indonesia's top volcano watcher, Surono, seems to enjoy the celebrity status brought to him by the eruptions of Mount Merapi.

He gladly embraces strangers, including women in Muslim headscarves, who ask for photos with him.

'I'm tired, but I must smile because everybody wants to take their pictures with me,' said Surono, head of the Center for Vulcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation. 'Maybe they saw me on television.'

Surono, a 55-year-old geophysicist who like many Indonesians uses only one name, has made daily appearances on TV to provide updates on the activity of Mount Merapi, which rumbled to life last month, spewing jets of searing gas and debris.

The volcano's eruptions since October 26 have killed at least 135 people and left more than 400 injured. More than 200,000 people living on Merapi's slopes have also been evacuated to government-run emergency shelters.

Surono, who studied at the Universite Joseph Furier and Universite de Savoie in France, said he has had very little sleep recently.

He oversees a team of scientists monitoring the country's rumbling volcanoes around the clock and, based on their reports, he has to decide if an evacuation is necessary.

Mount Merapi is now at the country's highest volcanic alert level, red, while two others of the country's 130 active volcanoes - Mount Ibu on Halmahera Island and Mount Karangetan on Siau Island - are at an orange alert level, one level down, and 19 are at the yellow level, which means are are showing activity.

'My daughter asked me to sleep more, but I told her, 'How can I sleep when the lives of thousands of people are at stake?'' Surono said, smoking incessantly in an air-conditioned room.

Experts said that even though Indonesia has the largest number of active volcanoes on Earth and a history of devastating volcanic disasters, the country has few scientists watching these potential hazards.

Surono, whose grey hair stands straight up, admitted that government scientists are poorly paid and many students preferred to choose other career paths.

He said his job at Merapi has been made complicated by the refusal of residents to evacuate their villages despite warnings.

On Friday, he expanded Merapi's danger zone to 20 kilometres from its peak from the previous 15 kilometres after violent eruptions killed more than 80 people. A few days earlier, he had expanded the zone from 10 to 15 kilometres.

'It's not easy to decide that an evacuation is necessary, but I believe in my scientific judgement,' he said.

'If only people had obeyed the evacuation order, there wouldn't have been casualties,' he said.

Surono said he was tired of the media misrepresenting his statements and had stopped watching television and reading newspapers because of that.

'I just want to concentrate on my job,' he said.

When asked why he chose volcanology as his field, he quipped: 'Like every man, I love women, and what is more like women than volcanoes? They give fertility, are placid and strong, but like women, when their temper flares, you will feel them.'

Merapi, located about 500 kilometres east of Jakarta, is one of the world's most dangerous volcanoes.

The 2,968-metre peak's deadliest eruption on record occurred in 1930 when 1,370 people were killed. At least 66 people died in a 1994 eruption, and two people were killed in 2006, the latest eruption before it rumbled back to life last month.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, where continental plates meet, causing frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

In August, Mount Sinabung in North Sumatra province began erupting after lying dormant for 400 years, forcing the evacuation of 30,000 people from its slopes.

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