Sunday, 21 January, 2018
Why Is Bali’s Mount Agung Eruption Dangerous?

Why Is Bali’s Mount Agung Eruption Dangerous?

Why Is Bali’s Mount Agung Eruption Dangerous?

Why Is Bali’s Mount Agung Eruption Dangerous?Mount Agung has shown its devastating power in the past. Now, it erupted again. Geophysicist Jacqueline Salzer tells DW about the different ways the volcano can kill.

It’s a composite volcano, also known as a stratovolcano. Such volcanos can often be found at tectonic subduction zones. In Bali, the Indo-Australian Plate is pushed below the Sunda Plate. It’s part of the Pacific Ring of Fire. In those areas, one can often find lava of high viscosity – unlike shield volcanos, for example, where the lava’s more liquid. This means that, in the eruption zones, the volcanic lava, ash and other eruption materials pile up steeply. They form the typical conical volcanos, which can also be very high mountains. Mount Agung, after all, is the tallest mountain on Bali, reaching more than 3,140 meters (10,300 feet) high.

How dangerous are such volcanos?

If the magma’s highly viscous, the volcano can be particularly explosive. The reason is that gases are caught inside the magma, under pressure. The pressure then increases as the magma rises to the surface. But when the volcano erupts, it suddenly discharges those gases – they expand and escape. In doing so they literally tear the magma to pieces, which results in huge ash clouds. These eruptions are repeated and can continue for many days because there’s a constant source of fresh magma and gases rising to the surface and releasing energy.

Why Is Bali’s Mount Agung Eruption Dangerous?What kind of dangers are there for the inhabitants of the island?

During the last eruption, most victims were killed by pyroclastic flows. Those are hot clouds of gases, ash and rock debris that race down the flanks of the mountain. They pose the biggest threat. It’s an unbelievably fast event: The pyroclastic streams reach speeds of several hundred kilometres per hour. Nobody can escape them. You have to be far enough away from the volcano – and early enough – to be safe. Another big danger is the “lahars.” It’s an Indonesian word, and it means a stream of mud that develops when the fluffy materials from the volcanic eruption get mixed with rainwater. There’s a lot of rain in Indonesia. These lahars flow down through riverbeds and valleys and carry huge pieces of rock and debris with them. They can tear down bridges and houses and can even cover entire villages. That’s the second big danger from the volcano. In addition, there are the clouds of ash that can rise more than 20 kilometres high. The heavy ash can then fall down on the settlements. Another threat is the hot streams of liquid lava.


There are simulations for many dangerous volcanos, for the impact of an eruption. The civil defence authorities perform such calculations, but unfortunately, they can never be 100 percent certain. In the case of Mount Agung, they’ve evacuated an area of twelve kilometres around the volcano. More than 80,000 people have had to leave their homes so far. Lava flows can be expected in an area within several kilometres of the volcano. Pyroclastic streams can reach much further – sometimes dozens of kilometres. In Mount Agung’s last eruption, the lava flows travelled seven kilometres and the pyroclastic flows up to ten kilometres. The ash cloud can reach considerably further. This will then affect air travel, and it also makes breathing difficult. Here in Germany, for example, we were able to detect traces of volcanic eruptions that occurred in Iceland.

There are also big pieces of rock flying around – the so-called “bombs.” How big can they get?

It depends on the eruption. During the last eruption of Mount Agung, they were “head-sized.”  Now, the authorities have also warned of rocks in the range of tens of centimetres. But there have been cases in which the bombs were several cubic meters in size and weighed several tons. It all depends on the intensity of the eruption and on the distance to the crater. In principle, we can say the farther away from the crater, the smaller the bombs.




Vanuatu is 5,000 kilometres away from Bali. It’s a different tectonic plate boundary, and even the composition of the rock is different. The lava on Vanuatu is considerably more liquid, forming literal lava lakes. One can hardly compare the two volcanos. That this is happening at the same time is a coincidence. But that does not mean that the volcano in Vanuatu is any less dangerous. There’s a freshwater lake in the crater of Mount Manaro. The interaction of large amounts of water with hot lava poses additional risks. It could lead to explosions, and the water from the lake could also result in Lahars. That eruption will develop in a different way than on Bali. But regardless, the dangers there also include volcanic ashes, gases, bombs, lava and pyroclastic flows.

Credit: Fabian Schmidt for DW, 27 November 2017.

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