The powerful Indonesian volcano Lewotobi Laki-Laki has erupted again, creating an extreme hazard in the Southeast Asian archipelago for the second consecutive day. As G.Business, citing  The Independent, reports, enormous ash clouds and incandescent lava have blanketed wide areas of Flores Island in the south-central east of the country since Monday noon. Entire villages are covered by a thick layer of volcanic ash; people have fled, and rice paddies, roads and rooftops lie under gray dust.

The first major eruption was recorded Monday at midday, when a massive ash column shot straight into the sky to an estimated height of 18 kilometres. Activity intensified that evening: with a thunderous roar the volcano again hurled lava and ash—this time to 13 kilometres. Before dawn on Tuesday the sequence continued, and another plume rose four kilometres, thickening the ash fall across the region.

Dozens of villages are now buried under suffocating dust. Eyewitnesses describe rice fields turned gray and unrecognisable, blocked paths and damaged roofs. The air is “barely breathable.” Residents donned masks and left their homes. Dramatic footage circulating on social media shows people—many of them children—running through dense ashfall, sometimes accompanied by fiery rock raining down.

Lewotobi Laki-Laki is one of more than 120 active volcanoes in Indonesia and sits on Flores Island. The nation lies along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a zone of intense seismic and volcanic activity. Authorities have begun evacuations from high-risk areas and urge everyone to stay at least three kilometres from the crater.

For context: only days earlier, a volcano near Reykjavík, Iceland erupted for the tenth time in three years. According to the Icelandic Meteorological Office, that event, though spectacular, left infrastructure and air traffic unharmed.

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