My Merapi Mount Climbing

Watching the news with its update from the local television on Merapi Mount Eruption brings back my memory to my first mount climbing long time ago. It was perhaps in 2002 or 2003, I joined the Merapi Mount Climbing with Sentraya Buana, a group of nature loving students in my collegue. There were about twenty or more set off for the adventure. We took off by small bus or van, strange i did not remember the details of our transportation. We made our camp post in one of the local villagers' house. It was used for climbers as their base camp before taking a hike on the mountain by midnight. I remembered we had some hot tea or coffee, and some snacks while arranging all preparations. I did not make any special arrangement for this, just taking a jacket, a pair of shoes (which were definitely inappropriate for mountain climbing, lol), mineral water, a silly hat, and my backpack (which was poorly fill in). I did not quite know well the other students from our goup. There's only three of my colleague friends i knew well, Yuni Wulandari, Ambhita and Eva). They made me go into this crazy climb. Well, I always love mountain, and had long a dream to make the climb, finding the Eldeweiss flowers perhaps, lol. My head was full of so much imagination I got from books I read about mount climbing, the beautiful sunrise, the lust green vegetation, wild flowers, perhaps a little bit adventure with the wild animals, lol.So, for the first time in my life I climbed the mountain in real. We waited until midnight. We set off for the hike at 11.30 pm or so. The wind was freezing and it was totally dark. We made use our flaslight, the stars, and the crescent moon as our source of light. We felt the moist coming from the fog and cold air brushed our face. We sometimes had difficulty in breathing the higher we got. The path was not as hard as I thought. As the path was often used by mount climbing lovers, it became solid and easy to get pass. When the wind got harsher, we had to stop for a break. The rule was clear "DO NOT GET SEPARATE FROM THE GROUP". So, within each round, someone would always shout our names, making sure, the group stayed intact. Some managed to bring music player, and some sang. I remembered we listened to Kitaro music. It was awesome. I mean listening to such natural music in nature, though we hardly saw our surroundings, lol. I did'nt drink a lot during the journey up because taking nature calls in the wild unknown zone with no water, no river was quite horrofying for me. So I drank as little as possible to avoid having an urge to go to bathroom...because i found no running water, no river, no water whatsoever in this wild...just the trees, grasses, and night insects.

By dawn we got at the base of the crater. I could see the surroundings by now. And definitely it was not as majestic as I had imagined. We made the climb after an inferno engulfed the mountain a few months before. The devastation was barely laid within our eyes.The burning leaves and grasses....the wrecked branches...it was like seeing a destructed forest after the fire. But the big rocks were awesome. I managed to jump over one by one. The sunrise was magnificent. Morning Pray in this wildlife was absolutely soothing. We made it safe and sound. No one was left behind. There was a kind of little lagoon below us. Some of my colleagues went there, but i was just sitting around, spreading my soaring legs in the shade of a tree untouched by the fire. This was Merapi from up close with its sand, rock and half burned vegetation. I saw no Eldeweiss nor any wild flowers around. Some climbed higher up to its top to see the crater. I did not get a long as my shoes betrayed me in the track up to the crater. It was slipery as sands jixed with small stones/pebbles from its previous eruption scaterred alongside the path. I just waited at the base of the crater...it was my worst regret of never seeing Merapi crater.

After staying awhile, we started to climb down the slope. It was around 8 or a.m. The sun was burning hot, not even my silly hat could save me from its heat. The way down the slope was much more difficult. It was a real ordeal with the sun glaring on to of us. It made me drank a lots which in turn It made getting the urge for bathroom. Off course I could not do my personal need in the wild, so I had to hang on till we reached our base camp. The journey back down was a torture, lol. At daylight, I could see the vicinity...mostly half burned trees and grasses. The air was damp. The sun was too hot. I enjoyed my night journey better than the day. Beads of sweats rolled over our faces, shirts, and bodies. We smelt terrible. By the time i reached the camp (perhaps it was around 2 or 3 p.m), I rushed to bathroom. Wow, that was definitely a heaven after seven hours walk of an ordeal, lol. The cold water soon coolled off my head and body. Unforunately, in dry season like this, water was scarce. So I managed to bath only with a few buckets of water, perhaps only a bucket. I had no idea that living close to nature like this could be tiresome, lol. We had to share water so the rest of us could get a little.

That's the first mount climbing i've never forgot. In my life, I climbed only two mountains, it was too little for mountain climbing lovers, lol. I guess I am not quite made of such tough life, lol. Anyway, my longing for the forest and mountain is satiated when I visit my grandmother each year during Eid ul Fitr. I always love taking a stroll at the little forest at the back of her small village. Yeah, I guess I love the wilderness, just having little chance to live by it, lol.

Now, Merapi Mount is erupting. It keeps producing vulcanic material and clouds running down its slope. It's hard to imagine if I climb the mountain in time like this. The vulcanic cloud is leathal, destroying anything on its path. Its heat can reach up to 600 degree celcius. It has claimed tens of life in its eruption last Tuesday. Last night, it erupted again, spewing fire and clouds of vulcanic ash to down its slope. The ash has reached as far as Yogyakarta city and Gunung Kidul Area. It means its effect can be felt up to 65 km away. The police and armed forces were forced to evacuate people by force because these people in dangerous zone did not want to leave their homes. They were worried if they went away, their property, their catlle, and their belonging would be looted by irresponsible people.

I pray no more victims if Mount Merapi erupting again. Hopefully, people will obey the order if they are told to leave their homes when imminent dangers threathening their lifes.

Storms crippling tsunami aids to Mentawai Island

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/10/30/storms-crippling-tsunami-aid-indonesia-islands.html

A group of private aid workers battled fierce swells and driving rain that kept most craft on shore Friday, managing to deliver food and other supplies to desperate survivors on the islands hardest hit by a tsunami that killed more than 400 people.

Government agencies pulled back boats and helicopters that had been ferrying aid to the most distant corners of the Mentawai islands and instead resorted to air-dropping boxes of aid from planes.

On a borrowed 75-foot (24-meter) cruiser, aid workers faced rough seas and sheets of rain - plus miserable seasickness - to bring noodles, sardines and sleeping mats to villages that have not received any help since Monday's earthquake. In one village, most people were still huddling in a church in the hills, too afraid to come down even to get the aid.

Dozens of injured survivors of the tsunami, meanwhile, languished at an overwhelmed hospital Friday. They lay on mats or the bare floor as rainwater dripped onto them from holes in the ceiling and intravenous tubes hung from plastic ropes strung from the rafters.

"We need doctors, specialists," nurse Anputra said at the tiny hospital in Pagai Utara - one of the four main islands in the Mentawai chain slammed by tsunami, which was triggered by a 7.7-magnitude earthquake.

Inside the tiny hospital, a man cradled his screaming son as staff tended to the child's broken arm. The 35-year-old described how his two other young children were ripped from his embrace by the towering wave and sucked out to sea.

Health workers also cared for a newly orphaned 2-month-old boy found in a storm drain. The infant, with cuts on his face, blinked sleepily in a crib. Hospital workers named him Imanual Tegar. Tegar means "tough" in Indonesian.

The toll from the earthquake and the tsunami it spawned rose to 408 on Friday as officials found more bodies, and 303 people were still missing and feared swept out to sea, said Agus Prayitno of the West Sumatra provincial disaster management center.

Officials say 13,000 survivors on the islands are homeless. Many were sorely in need of help, which the government was struggling to deliver.

While tons of aid has reached the islands' main towns, many farther-flung villages are accessible only by foot or sea because roads are too old or damaged for large trucks. Storms, however, have made the waters too dangerous for small boats, West Sumatra Gov. Irwan Prayitno told reporters. Even when seas calm down, another official said the government hasn't been able to gather enough boats to address the scale of the disaster, making do with just a few dozen wooden boats with outboard motors.

Despite the challenges, a group of 50 private aid workers did set out by sea in a 75-foot (24-meter) vessel Friday for villages along the southern coast of South Pagai.

Soo after the wave-breaking boat set out, it became apparent why other vessels had been kept back. Nearly all the 50 relief workers on board were ill from the pounding waves and the deck had to be hosed off at one point to clear vomit.

Still, the mission was able to bring the first help to the village of Limu where dozens of houses were destroyed, some swept off their foundations, and dead chickens littered the shoreline.

Villagers eagerly grabbed the boxes of sardines and noodles and the sleeping mats the workers delivered, though many were too terrified to come down to the beach. There were no deaths in Limu, but one person was injured.

Government teams also delivered food - mostly instant noodles - by dropping it out of Hercules planes. Local television footage showed survivors running to pick up the boxes.

Four days after the tsunami crashed into the Mentawai islands off Sumatra, details of survivors' miery and new accounts of the terrifying moments when the wave struck were still trickling out from the area, which was cut off by rough seas for nearly two days after the tsunami.

A group of surfers told of watching in horror as a roaring wall of water crossed a lagoon and slammed into their three-story thtch-roofed resort. The power of the wave shook the building so hard they feared it would collapse. All 27 people at the resort survived - five of them by clinging to trees.

"It was noise and chaos. You can hear the water coming, coming, coming," Chilean surfer and videographer Sebastian Carvallo said Friay. "And then before the second wave hit the building, everyone was, like, screaming and when the wave hit the building, you could only hear people praying."

Carvallo said at least two of the waves were at least 16 feet (five meters) high. Early reports said there was only one wave 10 feet (three meters) high, but several witnesses have since described one or several taller than that.

Hundreds of miles (kilometers) from the tsunami zone, meanwhile, a volcano on the island of Java that killed 35 people this week erupted five more times Friday, sending searing clouds of ash cascading down its slopes. No more casualties were reported as the number of refugees swelled to 47,000.

The number of dead from the two disasters, which struck within 24 hours of each other, has now reached 443. Officials said two more people died of burns from Tuesday's blast, bringing the volcano's death toll to 35.

At least 47,000 people who live around Mount Merapi are staying in government camps or with friends and relatives, the National Disaster Management Agency said.

The volcano's activity appeared to be easing pressure behind a lava dome that has formed in the crater, said Safari Dwiyono, a scientist who has been monitoring Merapi for 15 years.

"If the energy continues to release little by little like this, it reduces the chances of having a bigger, powerful eruption," he said.

Residents from Kinahrejo, Ngrangkah, and Kaliadem - villages that were devastated in Tuesday's blast - crammed into refugee camps. Officials brought cows, buffalo and goats down the mountain so that villagers wouldn't try to go home to check on their livestock.

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Associated Press writers Achmad Ibrahim in the Mentawai islands, Slamet Riyadi at Mount Merapi, and Irwan Firdaus and Kay Johnson in Jakarta contributed to this report.

Natural Disaster

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2010/10/2010102843636591256.html

Lately, extreme weather hits us in most unexpected times. Often it gets so hot during the morning and day, then suddenly replaced by heavy torrential rain. Flooding already spread in some parts of Jakarta. This week, the rain has taken its toll, a university student stumbled over a sewer hole, got carried away by the current as the flood swarming around. She was found dead the following day. Hundreds were forced to leave their home as water kept raising higher and higher. Flooding caused not only financial and lives lost but also heavy traffic jam. Last Monday, some of my colleagues spent almost 7 to 8 hours on their way home from work. They got home by midnight or more. I was lucky i got home at 8.30 p.m as i took train.

Also this week, on Tuesday the most active volcano in my country had began erupting, spewing volcanic ash and rock and hot clouds to villages nearby killing at least more than 40 people. Hundreds of thousands are being evacuated as experts and officials say it might be the beginning only. The worst is yet to come coz the merapi mount has built up more materials in its dome. Some predict the eruption might be much worse than its last eruption in 2006. My grandma and some of my big fam from my mother's side reside in village near that area. They told me they were pretty far away from the lava path, suffering only by the volcanic ash.

A day before the eruption, an earthquake of 7.2 in magnitude hit our western region, igniting a 3 metres tsunami that smashed our remote Mentawai island. The tsunami smashed over villages in the island, flattening houses. More than a hundred people died, while 400 or more are stil missing. Relief workers are hampered by the bad weather as the only way to reach the tsunami hit area is by half day ride on boat from Padang port in Sumatera island. Help and evacuation is on slow progress coz the remoteness of the island. Experts say the region has potential to have another massive earthquake as we sit right on top of the so called ring of fire. Last 2004, an eartquake of 9.2 in magnitude had ignited the worst tsunami flatenning the tip of Sumatera island, the Aceh province. It killed more than 2 hundreds thousand people.