Alert level raised at Anak Krakatau

Anak Krakatau in Indonesia.

Eruptive activity is definitely on the uptick at Anak Krakatau. The Jakarta Globe is reporting that the volcano is “spewing molten lava 1000 meters in the air“. I’m not entirely sure if that is accurate or that the volcano is throwing volcanic bombs or tephra that high. The head of the Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation Center in Indonesia, merely referred to as Surono in the article (are we playing Brazilian soccer?), says that the volcano is “a high threat because the eruptions have started spreading.” Again, I’m not too sure what that means, whether this implies that they see multiple vents or that the eruption is just getting large in magnitude. In any case, it still seems pretty impressive and potentially hazardous. Officials at the Krakatau observatory have created a 3-km exclusion zone around volcano. This might suggest that the local people were right to be concerned about the level of activity at Anak Krakatau over the past month. It is also hard to tell from this article whether the higher alert level at Anak Krakatau is higher than the Alert 3 that was mentioned in this week’s SI/USGS Report.

Note: There is supposedly an Anak Krakatau webcam, but I have yet to get it to offer me anything but a connection timeout. Anybody else know of a webcam for this volcano?