Today is again a very sad day for Indonesian. An earthquake and tsunami combo has hit from south of Java. Death toll has surpassed 100 mark, but it’s quite certain that it’d climb to much more than that.

The quake can be felt from Jakarta (north of Java). The tsunami was reported to be as high as 18 feet / 5 meters.

I read today’s newspaper frozen in shock, finding it hard to believe that it’s happening again to us in such a short time - tsunami in aceh, violent quake in yogya, landslides in many places; and now this.

Indonesia seem to be the place for experiencing off-the-scale disasters.

On 1851, Tambora mountain erupted.
The explosion shot so many ashes to the sky, it blocked much of the sunlight. Year 1815 ended up known as the “Year Without Summer”. Tens of thousands people died from famine, because crop failed to produce. The exact details of the explosion could never be found out, because all population around the mountain was killed on the event.

On 1883, Krakatoa (Krakatau) erupted.
The explosion was so violent, the mountain itself and the island it was on got destroyed in the process. It also produced the loudest sound in recorded history - reaching 180 dBSPL in places 160 km (100 miles) away, heard from Australia (3500 km away) and Island of Rodrigues (4800 km away).
There were no survivors on the island of Sebesi, about 13km from Krakatoa. Many other settlements were also destroyed so thoroughly; some, like Ujung Kulon, was never repopulated. Human skeletons still found washed up on east coast of Africa up to a year after the explosion. Worldwide temperature didn’t return to normal until 1888.

Welcome to Indonesia.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 at 5:26 and is filed under In English, It sucks, Teknoblogia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.