New Efforts To Plug Indonesian Mud Volcano

DISASTER MANAGEMENT

More than 13,000 households have been displaced from the area since May 2006.

by Staff Writers
Jakarta (AFP) May 12, 2007
The Indonesian government is to use new measures to plug a 'mud volcano' that has left thousands homeless and unemployed, reports said Saturday. The steaming crater, located near Indonesia's second-largest city of Surabaya in East Java, first began spewing mud in May last year after exploratory gas drilling went wrong.

The torrent has continued despite constant efforts to stop it.

The latest attempt will try to plug the mudflow using inverted pressure in the area where spoil has built up around the crater, the Jakarta Post reported.

"This method is expected to to significantly reduce volume flowing out of the gas well," the minister of public works Djoko Kirmanto told the Post, after meeting with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Friday.

Meanwhile, many victims of the incident went on hunger strike Friday after they received spoiled rice rations, state news agency Antara reported.

"This is the peak of our anger, we ask (food rations) to be given cash instead but the company didn't care," said Sunarto, one of many people living in temporary shelters.

Another resident, Sutrisno said that they will carry out the protest "until our demands are heard."

Several groups have taken legal action against the local drilling firm, PT Lapindo Brantas, which apparently pierced a layer of strata several thousand feet below ground, triggering the mudflow.

Indonesian experts have tried to plug the crater using chains of concrete balls, but with limited success.

More than 13,000 households have been displaced from the area since May 2006.

Source: Agence France-Presse

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