Mount Dukono eruption kills three hikers

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Ash cloud rises from Mount Dukono eruption in Indonesia – video theguardian.com

The rescue operation is taking place in rough terrain only partly accessible to vehicles. Photograph: Basarnas/EPA theguardian.com

Police urged hikers to stay away to avoid a repeat of Friday’s disaster. Photograph: National search and rescue agency (Basarnas)/AFP/Getty Images theguardian.com

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Three hikers died on Indonesia’s Halmahera island after Mount Dukono erupted on Friday morning, sending an ash column roughly 10 km into the air, according to Agence France-Presse via The Guardian. Officials said the group was inside a prohibited zone near the Malupang Warirang crater, where the volcanology centre has warned since December that people should stay at least 4 km away due to heightened seismic activity. Fifteen of the 20 hikers were reported to have descended safely, while two others were unaccounted for in official briefings as the bodies of the dead remained on the mountain hours after the eruption.

The incident is a familiar pattern in Indonesia’s “ring of fire” tourism economy: a four-tier alert system and posted warnings exist, but the last step—enforcement at trailheads—is often handled by local guides and porters whose income depends on getting clients up the slope. Police said the guide and a porter were taken to the station and could face criminal charges for leading hikers into the no-go area. That assigns blame to the people at the very end of the chain, even as the demand side is increasingly international and media-driven; officials told AFP many foreign visitors climb to create content, and that social media appeals and warning signs were ignored.

Mount Dukono is currently at level 2, meaning elevated activity but not a full closure of the wider area. Authorities said they would “strictly monitor” hiking posts and prohibit climbing while the volcano remains at that level—an admission that monitoring had not been strict enough to prevent a group of 20 entering a restricted zone in the first place. The geography compounds the problem: rescue teams were operating in rough terrain only partly accessible by vehicle, and ongoing eruptions made evacuation and search unsafe. When the mountain continues rumbling, the time window for recovery narrows and the cost of each decision rises.

No towns or villages were close enough to face immediate danger, but officials warned that ash could drift north and that residents, including those in Tobelo city, should be vigilant for ash rain that can affect public health and disrupt transport. Indonesia has nearly 130 active volcanoes; the hazard is not rare, which makes the choice to step over a boundary line harder to explain as a one-off misjudgment.

The government’s geology agency said there are no settlements within about 9 km of the crater. The hikers were still close enough to die.