The loudspeakers on the Mosques in Jakarta have been announcing with verse, sermons, prayers and song all thoughout the night that Ramadhan is over and the Eid celebrations have started. Fireworks could be heard all night long.
In Indonesia we have a long holiday and I have decided to leave tomorrow to visit one of my life long ambitions, to visit Krakatau volcanoe. I read of this catastrophic erution which occured in 1883, as a child and finally I have the chance to visit it.
Krakatau volcano lies in the Sunda strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra. In about 416 A.D., caldera collapse destroyed the volcano and formed a 4-mile (7-km) wide caldera. The islands of Krakatau, Verlaten, and Lang are remnants of this volcano. The eruption and collapse of the caldera in 1883 produced one of the largest explosions on Earth in recorded time (VEI=6) and destroyed much of Krakatau island, leaving only a remnant. The official number of people killed in the 1883 eruption is somewhere around 36,000. Almost all of these folks were killed by tsunami that washed nearby shorelines. Krakatau had been obviously restless for long enough before the big eruption that there was nobody around when it occurred, however, the folks living on nearby islands and coastlines - many of which couldn't even see Krakatau - didn't evacuate and were killed.Since 1927, small eruptions have been frequent and have constructed a new island, Anak Krakatau (Child of Krakatau).
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