Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Indonesia has had more than its fair share of such disasters. In 1883 the
island of Krakatoa of the coast of Sumatra exploded, killing 35,000 people
and producing a tsunami that traveled around the world at least twice. Ear-
lier, in 1815, the 4,000-meter volcano of Tambora on the lesser Sunda island
of Sumbawa erupted more violently than any other volcano in recorded
history.
Tambora's explosion killed at least 70,000 people and left a crater 6 kilo-
meters wide and 1,000 meters deep. The volcano blasted 150 cubic kilome-
ters of dust, ash, and hydrogen sulfi de into the air, forming a vast column 25
kilometers high that reached into the stratosphere.
Much of the ash probably settled quickly, but droplets of sulfuric acid
were carried by stratospheric winds around the planet. The droplets refl ected
so much sunlight that temperatures fell, crops failed, and livestock died in
Europe and America, causing widespread starvation. In New England the
year 1816 was called “Eighteen hundred and froze to death,” the year without
a summer.
By comparison, the eruption of Oregon's Mount St. Helens in 1980 threw
a trifl ing single cubic kilometer of ash into the air. Even though this amount
of ash would have fi lled a hundred million large dump trucks, the eruption
had little ef ect on climate, lowering temperatures in the northern hemi-
sphere by about 0.1° Celsius.
But these eruptions, dramatic as they were, pale into insignifi cance as
we reach further back in time. Indonesia has been the scene, not only of the
most powerful eruption in recorded history, but of the most powerful we
know about in the past two million years. Seventy-four thousand years ago
an explosion far more powerful than Tambora's wiped out an entire moun-
tain on the island of Sumatra.
All that now remains of the mountain is Lake Toba, a substantial body of
water fi lling a crater that measures 100 by 30 kilometers. The calm waters of
the lake are now plied by boatloads of Indonesian vacationers, most of them
quite unaware of the violent origins of their pleasant holiday spot.
The mountain that disappeared has been posthumously given the name
Mount Toba. Its explosion was indeed in a class by itself. It threw 3,000
