Bencana Di Indonesia

Being located on the Pacific Ring of Fire (an area with a lot of tectonic activity), Indonesia has to cope with the constant risk of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, floods and tsunamis. On several occasions during the last 15 years, Indonesia has made global headlines due to devastating natural disasters that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human and animal lives, plus having a destructive effect on the land area (including infrastructure, and thus resulting in economic costs). Extreme wet or dry seasons can ruin food crop harvests, trigger inflation and put severe financial pressure on the poorer segments of the Indonesian population. Lastly, man-made natural disasters (such as forest fires brought on by slash-and-burn culture) can have far-reaching environmental consequences. 

One important note is that Indonesia's notorious weak infrastructure - brought on by mismanagement, lack of skills or corruption - in fact aggravates the resulting situation after a natural disaster has made its impact felt, meaning that natural disasters in Indonesia can cause more casualties and more damage than it should.

Volcano Eruptions in Indonesia

Indonesia is the country that contains the most active volcanoes of all countries in the world. The Eurasian Plate, Pacific Plate and Indo-Australian Plate are three active tectonic plates that cause the subduction zones that form these volcanoes. Indonesia is estimated to have 129 volcanoes, all carefully observed by the Centre of Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (Pusat Vulkanologi dan Mitigasi Bencana Geologi), because a number of Indonesian volcanoes show continuous activity.

There is at least one significant volcano eruption in Indonesia every year. However, usually it does not cause great damage to the environment or cause casualties as most of the active volcanoes are located in isolated regions.

Some notable volcano eruptions in Indonesia's history are listed below:

Volcano	Location	Date of Eruption	Casualties
Merapi	Central Java	03 November 2010	138
Kelut	East Java	26 April 1966	212
Agung	Bali	17 March 1963	1,148
Merapi	Central Java	25 November 1930	1,369
Kelut	East Java	19 May 1919	5,110
Awu	North Sulawesi	07 June 1892	1,532
Krakatau	Sunda Strait	26 August 1883	36,600
Galunggung	West Java	08 October 1822	4,011
Tambora	Sumbawa	10 April 1815	71,000+

Apart from taking human lives, a volcanic eruption can result in considerable damage to the local economies by hurting small and medium enterprises that are involved in tourism, culinary, commercial accommodation, agriculture, plantation, and livestock. A positive development is that volcano eruptions take less human lives today due to better volcano observation methods in combination with better organized emergency evacuations.