JAKARTA – Thousands of residents from Indonesia’s Tagulandang island were waiting to be evacuated as grey smoke continued to rise from Mount Ruang volcano on May 2.

Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency said it is aiming to evacuate some 12,000 affected residents to a safe place in the next three days, reported Antara News.

Indonesia’s Ruang volcano erupted on April 30, spewing lava that prompted the authorities to evacuate the people from the nearby Tagulandang island.

The Centre for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation raised the alert status of Ruang to the highest level after the eruption and warned the residents of Tagulandang island that a tsunami could be triggered by volcanic material collapsing into the ocean.

The transport authorities extended Manado’s Sam Ratulangi airport shutdown until noon on May 2. Meanwhile, carrier AirAsia said in an Instagram post on May 1 that flights to and from several cities in Malaysia’s Borneo were affected by the eruption.

Ruang island is about 100km from Manado, the capital of North Sulawesi province in the north-central region of the sprawling Indonesian archipelago.

Indonesia straddles the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an area of high seismic activity where multiple tectonic plates meet. REUTERS