MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By NASRULLAH ROA – “MOUNT TAMBORA, Indonesia — Bold farmers in Indonesia routinely ignore orders to evacuate the slopes of live volcanoes, but those living on Tambora took no chances when history’s deadliest mountain rumbled ominously this month.

Villagers like Hasanuddin Sanusi have heard since they were young how the mountain they call home once blew apart in the largest eruption ever recorded – an 1815 event widely forgotten outside their region – killing 90,000 people and blackening skies on the other side of the globe.

So, the 45-year-old farmer didn’t wait to hear what experts had to say when Mount Tambora started being rocked by a steady stream of quakes. He grabbed his wife and four young children, packed his belongings and raced down its quivering slopes.

‘It was like a horror story, growing up,’ said Hasanuddin, who joined hundreds of others in refusing to return to their mountainside villages for several days despite assurances they were safe.

‘A dragon sleeping inside the crater, that’s what we thought. If we made him angry – were disrespectful to nature, say – he’d wake up spitting flames, destroying all of mankind.’

…People here are jittery because of the mountain’s history – and they’re not used to feeling the earth move so violently beneath their feet. Aside from a few minor bursts in steam in the 1960s, the mountain has been quiet for much of the last 200 years.

Gede Suantika of the government’s Center for Volcanology said activity first picked up in April, with the volcanic quakes jumping from less than five a month to more than 200.

‘It also started spewing ash and smoke into the air, sometimes as high as 1,400 meters (4,600 feet),’ he said. ‘That’s something I’ve never seen it do before.'” Read more.