Anak Krakatoa eruption closes Jakarta airport and affects flights

The eruption of the Anak Krakatoa volcano, which caused a tsunami in 2018, has forced the temporary closure of the Jakarta international airport, one of the main air connection centers in Southeast Asia, due to the presence of ash, which has affected more than two hundred flight movements and some 22,000 passengers, the Government of Indonesia reported this Sunday.

Located in the Sunda Strait, between the islands of Java and Sumatra, Anak Krakatoa - 'son of Krakatoa' in Indonesian - recorded an eruption on Friday night that stopped this Sunday, explained - in a statement - the director of the Indonesian Geological Agency, Lana Saria, who ruled out a tsunami risk on this occasion.

The Indonesian Ministry of Transportation reported that the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport (Jakarta) has been closed since 1:30 a.m. local time (6:30 p.m. Saturday), which has forced the cancellation of sixteen international and four national flights, due to the volcanic ash being dispersed towards the provinces of Banten, West Java, Jakarta, Lampung and Bengkulu.

During the hours that the airport has been closed, "209 flight movements were affected," indicated the general director of Civil Aviation, Lukman F. Laisa, who raised the total number of affected passengers to 22,798.

The air authority indicated that it has changed schedules on connections with Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney, Seoul, Doha, Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur, while the domestic routes affected are those originating or ending in Denpasar - on the tourist island of Bali -, Lampung and Surabaya.

Discovered in 1927, Anak Krakatoa emerged from the waters more than half a century after the great eruption of the legendary Krakatoa, whose caldera was destroyed in 1883 after a series of massive explosions that cost the lives of more than 36,000 people and whose effects were felt around the world for months.

On December 22, 2018, a strong nocturnal eruption of what is known as the 'son of Krakatoa' caused the partial collapse of the volcanic cone, which in turn caused a tsunami that surprised hundreds of people who were spending the Christmas holidays on the coasts of Java and Sumatra. According to official figures, 425 people died, twenty-five were missing and some 14,000 were injured.

"The current morphology of Anak Krakatoa is different from what it presented before the 2018 episode (...). The evaluations carried out to date indicate that the growth of Krakatoa since the eruption of December 22, 2018 remains relatively limited and does not pose a risk of structural collapse of a magnitude capable of causing a tsunami," Saria said this Sunday.