Balinese residents are living in fear of Mount Agung violently erupting in a blaze of lava for the first time in 50 years.
On Tuesday, November 21, the massive Bali volcano launched a cloud of ash and steam 700m into the sky in what was described as phreatic eruption.
The alert level on Bali remains at Level 3 on a scale of 1 to 4, but a volcanologist has warned that Agung has entered an “eruptive phase”.
Thousands of locals have already fled Agung’s immediate danger zone as officials urged everyone to remain calm.
An eruption could be the most devastating thing to strike the island, since it last erupted in 1963 and killed more than 1,100.
Where is Mount Agung?
The terrifying 3.031m (9,944 ft) tall volcano stands on the northeastern tip of the tourist resort island, right in the heart of Indonesia.
Mount Agung is the tallest of Bali’s two volcanoes, and dominates the landscape from any point on the island.
Bali is part of the Indonesian archipelago – the world’s biggest island nation made up of 17,000 individual islands in Southeast Asia.
Agung is also just one of about 450 volcanoes that make up the volatile Ring of Fire. The Ring of Fire is a long chain of volcanoes and earthquake zones alongside the rim of the Pacific Ocean.
Local legends claim that Agung is a replica of the holy Mount Meru – a sacred site in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.
An important Balinese temple sits high up on the slopes of the volcano.
What are the evacuation zones around Mount Agung?
Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) issued a six to 7.5km immediate danger zone around the volcano’s summit.
Sutopo Nugroho, head of the BNPB, said: “Radius 6-7.5 km is prohibited from community activity.
“People are encouraged to be calm.”
The main risk posed by Agung is the threat of a magmatic eruption, which would release deadly pyroclastic flows on the island below.
In such a case, the BNPB warned that the deadly flows could spread out in all directions.
The agency warned: “The eruption of Agung generally occurs at the centre of the summit, the crater. Only one eruption occurred from the flank, Mount Pawon.
“Central eruption produced some lava flows that spread throughout all directions, due to its almost perfect cone shape with steep slope.
“A high-potential area devastated by lava flows cover a maximum distance from the crater about 7km (4.3 miles) northwest, 13km (8 miles) to the northeast and 11 km (6.8 miles) to the southeast.”