People living in the shadow of the Indonesian volcanic eruption feel devastated | Stories

At least 14 people have been killed, dozens more injured and hundreds of families homeless after Mount Semeru erupted on Saturday.

Surrounded by ashes and melted mud, residents living in the shadow of Mount Semeru in Indonesia have damaged property after their homes were covered by a volcanic eruption on Saturday.

The fathers carried the helpless daughters, the elderly villagers carried the mattress on their backs, and the farmers carried the surviving goats, trying to save what they could from their home.

“We did not know it was hot mud,” said Bunadi, a resident of Kampung Renteng village.

“All of a sudden, the sky darkened with rain and hot smoke.”

The blast killed 14 people and injured 56, the head of the disaster management agency said on Sunday.

The injured, 35, who were critically injured, were a minority compared to those who numbered 98. The official also said 1,300 people had been evacuated.

It also left many homeless and hundreds homeless.

At one mosque, mothers sat down next to their sleeping children, who had the privilege of surviving a flood that covered entire villages with ashes and left many people burning badly.

‘Deliverance Is at Hand’

Some returned to their ghost towns of the eruption despite the threat to their health from polluted air, eager to pick up pieces of dried-up muddy sea.

In a house in the state of Lumajang in East Java, plates, pots, and pans sat on a table as if they were being served dinner, but the meal was replaced with volcanic ash.

Others were searching for lost friends and relatives.

“There were 10 people carried in the mud,” said Salim, a resident of Kampung Renteng. “One of them was about to be rescued. He was told to run away but said, ‘I can’t, who can feed my cattle?’ ”

A man brings his buffalo out of the ash heap in the ashes of Mount Semeru, in the background, Lumajang, East Java, Indonesia. [AP Photo]

The roofs of houses in the village of Sumber Wuluh came out of the muddy mud, indicating a large amount of falling in the area.

The cows were dead or stuck when their meat was torn apart by the heat.

Another cigarette hung in the mouth of one of the evacuees as he was being dragged to safety, while uniformed rescue attendants worked behind the black gray.

A group of residents of Sumber Wuluh stood together in the ashes, overlooking the Semeru valley as smoke billowed up.

With its thick, leafless trees, landless cars and houses built around it, they and their animals were the only ones who lived a quiet life.

Indonesia, an archipelago with a population of over 270 million, enjoys earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because it is located along the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, with erroneous horizontal lines.