MORE than 11,000 people have been told to evacuate after Mt. Ruang erupted multiple times this week.
The 2,379-foot stratovolcano located in the Sangihe Islands arc, North Sulawesi, Indonesia has erupted five times since Tuesday.
Multiple volcanic eruptions prompted authorities to close the airport in the Indonesian city of Manado.
After its fourth eruption on Wednesday, the country’s volcanology agency raised the alert level high mountain to four, the highest on the scale.
The exclusion zone around the crater was also widened from four kilometers (2.5 miles) to six kilometers (3.7 miles) while authorities urged residents and tourists to stay away.
Meanwhile, officials worry that part of the volcano could collapse into the sea and cause a tsunami, the same thing that happened during a previous eruption in 1871 which killed more than 400 people.
Several flights in Malaysia and Singapore have been canceled at the height of the eruption.
Indonesia has more than 100 active volcanoes and sits along the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire – a tectonic belt of volcanoes and earthquakes around the Pacific Ocean.
