Life goes on as Mt. Merapi rumbles
A semblance of normalcy continues near the rumbling Mt. Merapi, which remains on alert status, with many residents tending their livestock and farms, and checking their houses during the day, before returning to evacuation shelters before the sun sets.
Prawiro, who along with his family is being temporarily housed at SD Dukun elementary school in Magelang, Central Java, said he still had to make money to pay his bills, whether or not Merapi eventually exploded.
What the 60 year old most fears is having power to his house cut by state electricity company PT PLN if he pays his bill late.
“I had to sell a cow to get electricity installed in my house. If the power is cut, I don’t know what else I can sell,” Prawiro said.
Singgat, 32, a resident of Argomulyo in Sleman, Yogyakarta, leaves her house for a shelter each night, along with the hamlet’s 200 other residents, before returning in the morning.
“We all go back home at 5 a.m. to work,” the mother of one said Thursday.
She said a shelter had been provided for the hamlet’s residents in the village office, but it was located too far from their homes. The residents preferred to spend the night in two houses belonging to residents who live in what is thought to be a safe zone in the event of an eruption.
“The provided shelter is too far away and we have to return to our homes to work. If we don’t work, where will we get money to pay our bills?” said the mother of one.
Another Argomulyo resident, Suherman, 35, said women and children slept in one of the houses, and men in the other. “We only spend the night in the houses, before going back to work during the day,” he said.
In the town of Klaten in Central Java, many of the men who are being housed in a shelter in Tegal Mulyo hitch rides on trucks each morning to return to their houses and land.
“I have to gather grass for my three cows and check my coffee plantation and other crops,” said Marno, who lives in Deles hamlet, Klaten.
At the Tanjung shelter in Muntilan, Magelang regency, some couples return to their homes in the day so they can have privacy.
“We have provided a special room to give husbands and wives privacy, but no one uses the room, maybe because they’re embarrassed,” said Harjono, a coordinator at the Magelang Natural Disaster Prevention Office.
He said at the Tanjung shelter, which houses over 500 people, between 30 and 40 people requested permission each day to return to their homes, to take care of chores or to check on their houses.
Meanwhile, observers reported continued activity at Merapi on Thursday, including dozens of small volcanic tremors.
The Jakarta Post