2012
Subchan
Wakid, 40, remains unemployed after his house and business
were swallowed by the mud volcano.
Photo: Quentin Jones |
''Over there was my home,''
the 40-year-old father says, indicating midway between a teetering
electrical tower and the roiling pit of steam and gas that
propels a burst of noxious sludge into the air
every 10 minutes or so.
He swings around and points to a few hundred metres away from
us. ''Here was a school.
It was three storeys high. It has been swallowed by the mud.''
It has been almost six years since drilling for gasunleashed
the torrent of mud burying thousands of homes, scores of factories,
rice fields, schools and mosque.
About 14,000 people lost their homes and livelihoods.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/thousands-of-victims-of-the-mud-volcano-find-their-voices-and-demand-justice-20120108-1pq3u.html#ixzz1ixNRYEAY
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2011
The Sidoarjo mud flow or Lapindo mud, also informally abbreviated
as Lusi, a contraction of Lumpur Sidoarjo (lumpur is the Indonesian
word for mud), is a mud volcano in the subdistrict of Porong, Sidoarjo
in East Java, Indonesia that has been in eruption since May 2006.
This biggest mud volcano in the world was created by the blowout of
a natural gas well drilled by PT Lapindo Brantas, although company
officials contend that it was caused by a distant earthquake.
At its peak Lusi was spewing up to 180,000 m³ of mud per day.
In mid August 2011, mud was being discharged at a rate of 10,000 cubic
metres per day, with 15 bubbles around the gush point. This was a
significant decline from a year previous, when mud was being discharged
at a rate of 100,000 cubic metres per day with 320 bubbles around
the gush point.[3] It is expected that the flow will continue for
the next 25 to 30 years. Although the Sidoarjo mud flow has been contained
by levees since November 2008, resultant flooding regularly disrupts
local highways and villages, and further breakouts of mud are still
possible.
April 2010
New mudflows spots have begun in April 2010, this time on Porong Highway,
which is the main road linking Surabaya with Probolinggo and islands
to the east including Bali, despite roadway thickening and strengthening.
A new highway is planned to replace this one however are held up by
land acquisition issues. The main railway also runs by the area, which
is in danger of explosions due to seepage of methane and ignition
could come from something as simple as a tossed cigarette.
June 2009
Tthe residents had received less than 20% of the suggested compensation.
By mid-2010, reimbursement payments for victims have not been fully
settled, and legal actions against the company have stalled. It is
worth mentioning that the owner of the energy company, Aburizal Bakrie
was the Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare at the time of
the disaster. He is now the chairman of one of the most influential
political parties in Indonesia.
January
5th, 2008
135
residents living near a mud volcano that has been spewing geiser-like
eruptions of hot, black sludge since mid-2006
were forced to flee after heavy rain caused dams surrounding the disaster-zone
to breach.
Railway
tracks and a major road near Porong, a village in East Java province,
were partially submerged before the
watery mud receded.
The government has made several attempts to contain
or stop the mud, but none has been successful.
Inquirer
Net
January
4th, 2008
The mud volcano that forced more than 15,000 people to abandon their
homes on the Indonesian island of Java
in 2006 has breached the barriers built to contain it, causing further
damage.
It was on Thursday, January 3rd, when
hot, foul-smelling mud began to flow into the area, covering the nearby
railway tracks and a main road. At least 10
vehicles were buried by one-metre deep mud.
The newly affected area is about 20 km
from Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city. But thousands of homes
and
factories in an area four times the size of Monaco have been submerged
by the hot mud since it first started to erupt.
(Reuters)
October 2006
So far, refugees have had enough time to take along their most valuable
possessions. But what they were
forced to leave behind is even more telling, as toys, shoes, mattresses
and canned goods float on the
surface of the dense liquid. The list of victims has not included
any human lives, only 1,605 chickens,
30 goats and 2 dairy cows.
Meanwhile, workers have begun installing steel pipes to pump water
and mud from the many catchment basins.
Workers are dredging a canal between one of the largest basins and
the nearby Porong River, as part of a plan to
divert new mud into the river and into the ocean 20 kilometers (12
miles) away. But because the river has very
little slope, experts fear that it could quickly silt up and flood
its banks.
Environmentalists are opposed to the plan because the flood of sediment
could endanger mangroves, fish and fishermen.
From
an article in Der Spegel
An Indonesian court on Thursday rejected a lawsuit
brought by environmentalists against an energy company
alleged to have caused a mud volcano that has displaced thousands
in East Java province. The South Jakarta district
court ruled that the mudflow in Sidoarjo district was a "natural
disaster", and not caused by gas drilling by Lapindo Brantas
as alleged by Friends of the Earth Indonesia.
May 29th to September 2006
Possibly owing to gas drilling on the Indonesian island of Java, a
"mud volcano" has eveloped. and
rendered four square miles (ten square kilometers) of countryside
uninhabitable for years.
A team of British researchers says the deadly upwelling
began when an exploratory gas well punched through
a layer of rock 9,300 feet (2,800 meters) below the surface, allowing
hot, high-pressure water to escape.
The water carried mud to the surface, where it has spread
across a region 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) in diameter
in the eight months since the eruption began. Although the eruption
isn't as violent as a conventional volcano,
more than a dozen people died when a natural gas pipeline ruptured.
An unusual feature of the Indonesian eruption is that
it involves a very thin, liquid mud.
That is unfortunate, because the thin mud could flow for long distances,
increasing the devastation.
The mud is apparently being eroded out from deep underground,
creating a cavern. That means that the
land around the volcano might collapse to form a crater.
From
an article by Richard A. Lovett for National Geographic News
It was on May 29th, 2006 that the first residents first
witnessed stinking, hot mud shooting from the earth
180 meters (590 feet) from the drilling rig of the Lapindo company.
What began as a stinking puddle of mud soon turned into a pond, the
pond turned into a lake and the lake
turned into a small inland sea. Despite the local residents' efforts
to protect themselves and their homes with sandbags, sludge levels
continued to rise. One night the hot mud crept into nearby houses
for the first time.
In June, the volcano spit out an average of 5,000 cubic meters (178,571
cubic feet) of mud a day --
enough to fill 150 garbage trucks.
In July, that amount increased five-fold, to a daily discharge volume
of about 25,000 cubic meters
In August, daily production jumped to 50,000 cubic meters (about 1.8
million cubic feet).
By September, the mud hole's average daily output amounted to 125,000
cubic meters
(4.5 million cubic feet), enough to transform a soccer field into
a pool of mud 17 meters (56 feet) deep.
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