A clip shared with AFP by rescue teams at the scene showed an ambulance blaring its sirens, rushing an evacuated climber from the scene with burns.
In another clip, a rescue worker with a flashlight strapped to his head piggybacks a hiker who moans in pain and says “God is great” as she is led to safety in the darkness of night.
The eruption was ongoing, which was preventing air evacuations by helicopter, Malik said.
“Visually, until this morning, smokes are still billowing from the top. Visually, everything still looks grey,” he said.
RAINING ASH
Rudy Rinaldi, head of the West Sumatra Disaster Mitigation Agency told AFP some of the rescued hikers needed medical treatment because of their proximity to the eruption.
“Some suffered from burns because it was very hot, and they have been taken to the hospital,” he said.
“Those who are injured were the ones who got closer to the crater.”
According to a national search and rescue agency, or Basarnas, list seen by AFP of those found, at least eight people suffered burns, one had burns and a fracture and another had a head wound.
Ahmad Rifandi, an official at the Mount Marapi monitoring station, told AFP that ash rain was observed after the eruption.
“It has reached to Bukittinggi city,” he said Sunday, referring to the third-largest city in West Sumatra that has a population of more than 100,000.
Local disaster agency official Ade Setiawan said in a statement residents in local villages were “given masks and reminded to stay inside their houses”.
Marapi is on the second alert level of Indonesia’s four-step system and authorities have imposed a three-kilometre exclusion zone around its crater.
The Indonesian archipelago sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, where the meeting of continental plates causes high volcanic and seismic activity.
The Southeast Asian country has nearly 130 active volcanoes.
Source: CNA
