Five days after the earthquake that followed the tsunami hit the central region of Sulawesi Island on 28 September 2018, the northern region of the 4th largest island in Indonesia was covered with volcanic dark smoke from Mount Soputan.
After the status was raised on 3 October at 01:00 WITA, this volcanic eruption episode began on the same day at 08:47 WITA. The eruption has a height of ash column reaching about 4000 m above the peak (around 5800 m above sea level) and recorded on a seismogram with a maximum amplitude of 39 mm with a duration of about 6 minutes.
When contacted by SBS Indonesian, Martanto - Geological Investigator of Eastern Region PVMBG (Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation) Volcano Mitigation Subdivision - said that there was a correlation between earthquakes and volcanic activity. But the earthquake is not completely will always be a trigger for volcano's increased activity.
Martanto added that the community needs to be aware of areas that have a high potential for geological disasters. This potential map can be accessed by the community, so they are expected to be alert to threats when a geological disaster is occurring.
Related to whether the earthquake and tsunami that struck the city of Palu cause Mount Soputan eruption, Martanto said that so far there has been no conclusions or results of investigations and studies that prove that the cause of this eruption is Palu's earthquake one week ago.
He added that the Soputan's volcanic activity had increased considerably long before the Palu's earthquake occurred, with the Indonesian Magma's press release states that the volcanic lava had increased slowly from mid-July to the end of August.
Until this afternoon (at 14:30 AEST), Soputan Volcano is still in Alert level (Level III). PVMBG suggests - one of them - is for residents to not be active in all areas within a radius of 4 km from the peak and within the sectoral expansion area towards West - Southwest as far as 6.5 km.
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