13 Dead as Indonesia's Mount Merapi Volcano Erupts

The 2006 blast Surono referred to killed two people. Officials said nearly 15,000 people had ignored earlier evacuation orders despite several minor blasts that sent lava spewing down Merapi’s southern slopes.

Many people sleeping in camps returned to their homes during the day to work and tend to their cattle. Some men refused to leave altogether, confident they would be able to escape. Field coordinator Widi Sutikno, of the Sleman district on the southern slopes of the mountain, said only about 3,700 people out of 11,400 in his area had sought shelter in makeshift refuges.

Indonesia has more active volcanoes than any other country. Volcanologists have warned that Merapi, a 2,914-metre (9,616-foot) peak, currently has more energy than before the June 2006 blast, its previous fatal eruption.

Its deadliest eruption occurred in 1930 when more than 1,300 people were killed. Heat clouds from another eruption in 1994 killed more than 60 people. In August, the 2,460-metre (8,100 foot) Mount Sinabung on the island of Sumatra erupted for the first time in 400 years, sending thousands of people into temporary shelters and disrupting flights.

Mount Sinabung is near Lake Toba, a 100-kilometre long volcanic crater that some archaeologists believe threatened the survival of the human race when it erupted between 69,000 and 77,000 years ago.