A terrible word in human history: Krakatoa (7 photos). Tragedy at Krakatau Eruption of Krakatoa 1883

1883 - a volcanic eruption that began in May 1883 and ended with a series of powerful explosions on August 26 and 27, 1883, as a result of which most of the island of Krakatoa was destroyed. Seismic activity on Krakatoa continued until February 1884.

This volcanic eruption is considered one of the deadliest and most destructive in history: at least 36,417 people died as a result of the eruption itself and the tsunami caused by it, 165 cities and towns were completely destroyed, and another 132 were seriously damaged. The consequences of the eruption were felt to one degree or another in all regions of the globe.

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✪ Dangerous Krakatau eruption. Volcano Krakatoa started to erupt or not?

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Description and consequences

The first information that the Krakatoa volcano woke up after a long hibernation (since 1681) came on May 20, 1883, when a huge column of smoke rose above the volcano's mouth, and the roar of the eruption made the windows rattle within a radius of 160 km. A huge amount of pumice and dust was thrown into the atmosphere, which covered the surrounding islands with a thick layer. In the following summer months, the eruption weakened slightly, then intensified. On June 24, a second crater appeared, and then a third.

Starting from August 23, the strength of the eruption progressively increased. By 1:00 pm on August 26, eyewitnesses reported that the column of smoke was rising to a height of 17 miles (28 km), and large explosions occurred approximately every 10 minutes. On the night of August 27, in the clouds of ash and dust surrounding the volcano, frequent lightning strikes were clearly visible, and on ships passing through the Sunda Strait and located several tens of kilometers from the volcano, compasses failed and intense fires of St. Elmo burned.

The culmination of the eruption occurred in the morning hours of August 27, when grandiose explosions were heard at 5.30, 6.44, 9.58 and 10.52 local time. According to eyewitnesses, the third explosion was the most powerful. All explosions were accompanied by strong shock waves and tsunamis that hit the islands of Java and Sumatra, as well as small islands near Krakatoa. Huge amounts of dust and volcanic ash were thrown into the atmosphere, which rose in a thick cloud to a height of 80 km and turned day into night in the territory adjacent to the volcano up to the city of Bandung, located 250 km from the volcano. The sounds of the explosions were heard on the island of Rodrigues off the southeast coast of Africa at a distance of 4800 km from the volcano. Later, according to the readings of barometers in different parts of the world, it was found that the infrasonic waves caused by the explosions circled the globe several times.

After 11 a.m. on August 27, the activity of the volcano significantly weakened, the last relatively weak explosions were heard at 2.30 a.m. on August 28.

A significant part of the volcanic structure scattered within a radius of up to 500 km. Such a range of expansion was ensured by the rise of magma and rocks into the rarefied layers of the atmosphere, to a height of up to 55 km. The gas-ash column rose into the mesosphere, to a height of over 70 km. Ash fall occurred in the eastern Indian Ocean over an area of ​​over 4 million km². The volume of material ejected by the explosion was about 18 km³. The force of the explosion (6 points on the scale of eruptions), according to geologists, was at least 10 thousand times greater than the force of the explosion that destroyed Hiroshima, that is, it was equivalent to an explosion of 200 megatons of TNT.

As a result of the explosions, the entire northern part of the island completely disappeared, and three small parts remained of the former island - the islands of Rakata, Sergun, Rakata-Kechil. The surface of the seabed rose a little, several small islands appeared in the Sunda Strait. According to the results of sounding, a crack about 12 km long was discovered to the east of Krakatoa.

A significant amount of volcanic ash remained in the atmosphere at altitudes up to 80 km for several years and caused intense coloring of dawns.

Tsunamis up to 30 meters high caused the death of about 36 thousand people on neighboring islands, 295 cities and villages were washed into the sea. Many of them, before the tsunami approach, were probably destroyed by a shock wave that toppled equatorial forests on the coast of the Sunda Strait and tore roofs from houses and doors from hinges in Jakarta at a distance of 150 km from the crash site. The atmosphere of the entire Earth was perturbed by the explosion for several days.

The rumble of the destructive and destructive eruption of Krakatoa volcano on August 26, 1883 was the loudest sound ever heard by mankind. 200,000 people died from fire, molten lava, falling debris, ash and a tsunami caused by a deafening explosion and reaching a height of 36 meters.

What is perhaps the greatest disaster in world history occurred on August 27, 1883, when an eruption blew apart Krakatau, a volcanic island lying in the Sunda Strait between the islands of Sumatra and Java.

More than 20 cubic kilometers of debris and ash, as well as a jet of steam with a diameter of 11 meters, shot up into the atmosphere after the loudest explosion known to mankind since its appearance. The resulting shock waves went around the Earth 7 times, created a 36-meter-high tsunami and a tidal wave, which killed 36,000 people.

The final death toll reached 200,000 and would probably have been more if Krakatoa had been an inhabited island. But it was an unattractive fragment of a volcano, which may have erupted in the same way in prehistoric times. The string of islands that form the Kandang ridge along the southeast coast of Java, it is likely that there used to be one huge volcano. There is no doubt that the closing islands of Perbovatan, Danan and Rakata were part of a prehistoric caldera or the edges of the top of an ancient huge volcano, which included Krakatoa.

The volcano was dormant from 1680 to 1883, and the 1680 eruption ejected only volcanic glass from the Perbovatan vent. It was from the same hole that the primary ejections occurred on May 20, 1883. These were small and so inconspicuous explosions that a group of curious Europeans ordered a steamboat on May 27 to visit the island and see what one member of the perilous expedition described as "a vast column of steam coming out with a terrifying noise from a hole about 27 meters wide" near the crater of Perbowatan. The team also observed that the islands of Rakata and Verlaten were covered in fine ash, and vegetation had died, though not burned.

From that day until June 19, everything was calm. Then small eruptions resumed, and the terrain changed for the worse.

On August 11, 1883, Captain Fersenar, who led the survey team on the neighboring island of Bant, set foot on the shore of the island of Krakatoa. The ground shook under his feet. And worst of all, the surrounding landscape looked like some kind of strange world: the entire island was covered with a half-meter layer of ash. Three columns of steam rose into the sky, and 11 new eruption centers, which were not there before May, threw out clouds of ash and steam. Terrified, the captain collected the necessary data in a couple of hours and left the island.

For two weeks, until August 26, the activity subsided, then there was a roar and emissions appeared. August 26 at 13.00 from the first explosions of Krakatoa, the windows of houses on neighboring islands rattled. Cracks radiated from the volcano in all directions. At 14.00, a huge cloud rose over Krakatoa, which reached a height of 27 kilometers. The fires of St. Elma. The captain of the ship, located 65 kilometers from Krakatoa, wrote: “Krakatau was terrifyingly magnificent, it looked like a huge wall pierced by zigzag lightning, and above it played the lazy snakes of linear lightning. These sparkling flashes were real manifestations of angry fire ... "

Other volcanoes in the Java chain, once part of the same prehistoric mountain, also began to erupt. The explosions of Krakatau grew until 17.00, when the first tidal waves formed, which hit the neighboring islands and flooded the fishing villages along with the inhabitants, and at the same time washed away all the ships.
Explosions and roar continued all night until the morning of August 27. Stone walls collapsed on the nearby islands from tremors, lamps shattered to smithereens, gas meters flew out of sockets. At a distance of 160 kilometers - in Java and Batavia - the rumble was such that everyone woke up. The houses shook as if heavy artillery were passing nearby.

Between 4.40 and 6.40 several large tidal waves spread from Krakatoa, possibly caused by further destruction of the northern part of the island.

By 10 o'clock in the morning the rehearsal was over and it was time for the main action. Two people observed what was happening and recorded their observations: the Dutch scientist R. Hewitt and a sailor from a clipper ship from Liverpool, R.D. Dalby. Hewitt watched from a mountain near the town of Angier, on the west coast of the island of Java. He later described everything he saw in the book Fires and Floods from Earthquakes:

“... Looking towards the island of Krakatau, which is about 48 kilometers away in the Sunda Strait, I suddenly saw the movement of small boats in the bay. It was as if a magnet were pulling them out of their calm hiding place, and they swam away in the same direction, guided, like the Flying Dutchman, by an invisible hand. In a moment they disappeared, swallowed by a powerful boiling abyss of fire and water. And right across the bay, the line of fire seemed to stretch towards the island. The earth's crust under the bay cracked, and as if all the flames of hell broke through to the surface of the waters. The sea rushed into the crevasse, carrying all the boats towards destruction. The hissing steam completed this hell…”

Sailor Dalby described his impressions as follows:

“It was getting darker and darker. And so the already loud roar intensified, and now it seemed to be heard all around us. The gusts of wind grew into a hurricane like none of us had ever experienced before. The wind turned into a kind of dense mass, sweeping everything in front of it, rumbled like a monstrous motor, and howled piercingly in the rigging like a devil in torment. The darkness thickened, but bright lightning that almost blinded us flashed everywhere. Thunder would be deafening...

... When we caught a glimpse of the sky, we noticed a terrible excitement there: the clouds were sweeping by at great speed, and, it seems to me, most of us decided that we were in a cyclone whirlwind. But as the noise got louder and louder, I thought it was something volcanic. Especially when tons of dust fell from the sky around noon. It looked like a gray sandy substance, and since we were only wearing cotton clothes, we were soon completely out of breath: burned, dirty and almost blind.

Visibility at this time was about a meter. I felt abandoned and groped my way across the deck, constantly clinging to something at hand. You can't imagine the strength of that wind. From time to time I met others who were in the same state as myself, but completely unrecognizable - just gray objects moving in the dark. One day I noticed a pair of wild eyes—the eyes of a poor old coolie peering out from under the boat.

None of us will ever be able to describe the noise, especially one huge explosion around noon, which is considered the loudest sound ever heard on earth ... It went from the top of Krakatoa straight into the sky ... The sky seemed like a continuous flash of flame, the clouds took on such fantastic shapes that they looked amazingly unnatural; sometimes they hung like curls. Some are shiny black, others are off-white…”

The sailor was almost right. A massive build-up of pressure beneath the Earth tore the cone of Krakatoa apart, ejecting roughly 20 cubic kilometers of erupted material into a cloud that rose 80 kilometers into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, fragments of the former cones of Danan, Perbovatan and Rakat collapsed, which sank into the sea, turning it into a boiling cauldron.

The sound of the explosion was so strong that it was heard at a distance of more than 4800 kilometers. And the shock waves circled the Earth 7 times. On the island of Rodrigues in the Indian Ocean, 4,800 kilometers from Krakatoa, a coastal security observer recorded the sound exactly 4 hours after the eruption. In Central Australia, 3,600 kilometers southeast of Krakatau, sound has also been recorded. In Western Australia, at a distance of 2700 kilometers, on the plains of Victoria, at the sound of a volcanic eruption, flocks of sheep took to a stampede. The sound was also heard throughout the United States.

In the Krakatoa area, pitch darkness descended on the area, plunging into the early night a territory within a radius of more than 400 kilometers. At a distance of 200 kilometers, darkness lasted 22 hours, at a distance of 80 kilometers - 57 hours. The ships, located at a distance of 2500 kilometers, reported that three days after the eruption, dust began to fall on the deck.

As if with a wave of a conductor's baton, all the Javanese volcanoes began to erupt. Papandayan split into pieces, and 7 of its cracks threw boiling lava down the slopes. In the Malay Archipelago, 130 square kilometers of the island of Java exploded and disappeared into the sea - from Point Cappuccine to Negeri Passorang.

And then one of the most terrible, most disastrous consequences of the eruption, the tsunami, was born.
A seismic tidal wave formed about half an hour after the catastrophic explosion, it roared down the coast of Java and Sumatra, partially or completely destroyed 295 settlements and killed 36,000 people (according to some sources, 80,000 people died).

According to N. van Sandyk, an engineer from the Loudon ship, the scene was terrible. He wrote:
“Like a high mountain, a monstrous wave rushed to the land. Immediately after it, three more waves of colossal sizes appeared. And before our eyes, this terrifying shifting of the sea, in one sweeping pass, instantly swallowed up the ruins of the city; the lighthouse fell, and the houses in the city were swept away with one blow, like houses of cards. Everything is over. Where the town of Telok-Betong lived a few minutes ago, the sea spread out ... We could not find words to describe the terrible state in which we were after this catastrophe. Like thunder, the suddenness of the changing light, the unexpected devastation that ended in a moment before our eyes, all this stunned us ... "

New volcanic mountains have risen from the sea; the islands rose and disappeared along with their inhabitants. In Angera and Batavia, tsunamis washed 2,800 people into the sea, and 1,500 people drowned off Bantam. The captain of the Loudon, having survived the tsunami, hurried to Angier to warn the Dutch fort. He found the entire garrison dead, except for one sailor who wandered among the corpses. The islands of Steers, Midach, Calmeyer, Verlathen, Siuku and Silesi disappeared under water along with the population.

Of the 2,500 workers at the quarry, which had previously been at an altitude of 46 meters above sea level, only two local residents and a government accountant survived after the flooding of the island. A German warship, which was outside Sumatra, was picked up by a tsunami and thrown almost 3 kilometers deep into the island, where it landed in a forest at an altitude of 9 meters above sea level.

Those inhabitants of the islands who managed to escape from the water were bombarded with red-hot debris and lava. From similar "rains" in Worlong, 900 people died, in Talatoa - 300 people. Fire stones and lava destroyed the village of Tamarang, killing 1800 people there.

On the night of August 27 and the morning of August 28, three more less intense eruptions shook the area. After that, the volcano finally calmed down. Sailor R. D. Dalby reported the destruction as follows:
“In place of luxuriant vegetation, nothing remains but a barren brown desert. The shores of both Java and Sumatra seemed to be broken into pieces and burnt out. A variety of debris floated past us. Huge rafts of vegetation, on which we saw huge frogs, snakes and other strange reptiles. And the sharks! One of their appearance was disgusting. As for our ship, we had painted it and tarred the rigging, and now it looked like we had been caught in a mustard shower.”

The echo of the explosions went around the globe. Robert Ballin, in his book Origins of the Earth, wrote: “Every particle of our atmosphere rang out from a huge eruption. In the UK the sound waves passed over our heads; the air in the streets and in the houses trembled with the volcanic impulse. The oxygen that fed our lungs also responded to the greatest fluctuation that occurred over 16,000 kilometers.

For months the sky over the entire globe shone, prompting Lord Alfred Tennyson to describe this phenomenon in verse in St. Telemache":
"Are the fiery remains
some fiery sand
Thrown so high that they sprayed
over the entire globe?
Day after day blood red sunsets
angry evenings sparkled.

Two-thirds of the island of Krakatau is gone. Where before the explosion over the sea at an altitude of 120-420 meters
land stretched out, there was nothing but a large depression at the bottom of the sea, reaching a depth of 270 meters.
The strange glow and optical phenomena persisted for several months after the eruption. In some places above the Earth, the sun appeared blue and the moon bright green. And the movement in the atmosphere of dust particles thrown out by the eruption allowed scientists to establish the presence of a “jet” flow.

Volcano Anak-Krakatau

On the site of the destroyed Krakatau volcano on December 29, 1927, a new one arose, called Anak-Krakatau (Child of Krakatau). The island appeared in the center of the three islands that once made up the Krakatoa volcano. Today, its height is about 300 meters with a diameter of about three to four kilometers. Since its inception, Anak-Krakatau has experienced 5 major eruptions. Anak-Krakatau has grown an average of 13 centimeters a week since 1950. The volcano is active. Small eruptions have been occurring regularly since 1994.

Krakatoa is a volcanic island located in the Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra, in the province of Lampung. It is worth noting the fact that this province is known for its volcanic instability - in May 2005 there was a strong earthquake (6.4 points), which caused great damage to Lampung Province. One of the attractions of Lampung Province is Tanjung Setia Beach, which is also famous for its unusual and challenging waves for surfers.

Krakatau is also the name of a group of islands that formed from a larger island (with three volcanic peaks) that was destroyed by the Krakatoa volcanic eruption in 1883. The eruption of Krakatau in 1883 provoked a giant tsunami, people died (according to some sources, about 40,000 people), two-thirds of the island of Krakatoa was destroyed. It is believed that the sound from the eruption was the loudest ever recorded in history - it was heard 4800 km from the volcano, and the giant waves provoked by the eruption were recorded by barographs around the globe. Scientists have calculated that the force of the explosion was 10,000 times greater than the explosion that destroyed the city of Hiroshima. In 1927, a new island appeared, Anak Krakatoa, which means "Child of Krakatoa".

An underwater eruption occurred at the site of the destroyed volcano, and the new volcano rose 9 meters above the sea a few days later. At first it was destroyed by the sea, but over time, when lava flows poured out in greater quantities than they were destroyed by the sea, the volcano finally won its place. It happened in 1930. The height of the volcano changed every year, on average, the volcano grew by about 7 meters per year. To date, the height of Anak-Krakatau is about 813 meters.

Due to the fact that Anak-Krakatau is an active volcano, and its status is the second level of alert (out of four), the Indonesian government officially forbade residents to settle closer than 3 km from the island, and a zone with a radius of 1.5 km from the crater is closed to tourists and lovers of fishing.

The rumble of the destructive and destructive eruption of Krakatoa volcano on August 26, 1883 was the loudest sound ever heard by mankind. 200,000 people died from fire, molten lava, falling debris, ash and a tsunami caused by a deafening explosion and reaching a height of 36 meters.

What is perhaps the greatest disaster in world history occurred on August 27, 1883, when an eruption blew apart Krakatoa, a volcanic island lying in the Sunda Strait between the islands of Sumatra and Java.

The eruption of the Krakatoa volcano on August 27, 1883 was called the world's greatest catastrophe. It destroyed 300 villages and claimed the lives of 36,000 people; the roar of the volcano was heard at a distance of 4800 km; the blast wave flew around the globe seven times, and for a long time the bodies of the dead and the wreckage of buildings floated on the surface of the ocean.

Krakatoa, which seemed like a fairly ordinary volcanic island, lay in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra in the Dutch West Indies (now Indonesia). Few of the island residents were worried about the 820 m high mountain that covered half the sky: there were no signs of volcanic activity, and some even considered the volcano extinct. But on May 20, 1883, the mountain's crater suddenly came to life, throwing hot ash high into the sky. Soon everything was quiet. Since the aftershocks that followed at the beginning of the summer were also weak, the locals did not worry here either. But by August, a powerful rumble began to be heard from the bowels of the earth.

At one o'clock on August 26, the island shuddered from a deafening roar. An hour later, a huge cloud of black ash hung over it 27 km long. People rushed to the sea, but not all. One Englishman who managed to escape in this way later wrote: “The unfortunate natives considered that the end of the world had come, they huddled together like a flock of sheep. Their screams made the atmosphere of what was happening even more oppressive.

The next morning, a strong earthquake split the island in two. Two-thirds of Krakatau simply disappeared. More than 19 cubic meters of rock turned into dust and shot up into the sky to a height of 55 km. Shortly thereafter, the 280 km wide strip plunged into absolute darkness. The roar of the eruption for some time deafened the inhabitants of the northern part of Java, 160 km away from the crash site, and the inhabitants of the island of Rodrigues in the Indian Ocean, 4800 km to the west, decided that there, beyond the horizon, there was a grandiose naval battle.

A giant crater with a diameter of 6 km remained from the island, extending 275 m deep into the sea. Filling the crater with sea water caused a powerful tidal wave 40 m high, rushing away from the island at a speed of 1100 km / h - almost at the speed of sound. A huge wall of water destroyed the neighboring islands and was felt even in Hawaii and southern California. By August 28, everything was quiet, although weak aftershocks were repeated until February 1884.

The consequences of the eruption were tragic. In the seas surrounding Java and Sumatra, masses of pumice thrown out by the volcano paralyzed navigation for several days. Months later, chunks of pumice were floating all over the Indian Ocean. Volcanic dust hung in the sky for more than a year, causing around the world the effect of a halo - light circles around the solar disk - and unusually picturesque sunsets. For the same reason, the color of the sun and moon sometimes changed to blue or green. Apparently, due to volcanic dust, daytime temperatures fell below normal levels.

In places where tectonic plates collide, volcanic activity is always intense. At least 100 volcanoes - including Krakatau - are located on the line connecting the Indo-Australian and Eurasian tectonic plates. In December 1927, tremors pushed new rock masses into the sea and 25 years later led to the formation of the island of Anak Krakatoa. Someday he will suffer the fate of his predecessor.