World+Geography

Krakatoa eruption

The cataclysmic eruption of the Indonesian island volcano of Krakatoa on August 26, 1883 triggered tsunamis that killed 36,000 Indonesians, propelled ash 50 miles high, and was heard thousands of miles away. The explosion nearly destroyed the entire island, but several new islands were created out of the lava and pumice that rained down on the surrounding area.

Krakatoa was situated near the much larger Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra in the Sunda Strait. An uninhabited island with three peaks, Krakatoa had begun experiencing volcanic activity on May 20, 1883, when one of the peaks emitted a large, white cloud of ash. Similar eruptions of steam occurred sporadically over the next few months and began to intensify in August. On the afternoon of August 26, Krakatoa began unleashing a series of powerful explosions that sent a large black cloud of ash soaring up into the atmosphere. The following morning at about 10:00 A.M., a climactic eruption launched giant streams of ash, molten lava, and steam into the sky.

That final eruption on August 27 shot more than five cubic miles of ash and rock into the air, obliterating most of Krakatoa, but it resulted in no known loss of life on the uninhabited island. However, the massive explosions that began the previous day caused several powerful tsunamis to surge toward Java and Sumatra. The largest of those, estimated at 120 feet high, crashed into the coastlines of Java and Sumatra around midday on August 27, submerging or wiping out hundreds of towns and villages.

The giant waves caused the deaths of more than 35,000 people, and nearly 1,000 more people are believed to have been killed in Sumutra by the ash, pumice, and hot gases that struck the area. In the harbor of the capital city of Batavia (present-day Jakarta) on Java's northwest coast, thousands of boats were destroyed. Hot debris from the exploded volcano fell over an area covering hundreds of square miles.

The destructive forces unleashed by Krakatoa were felt far beyond Indonesia. Volcanic ash fell on Singapore, 520 miles to the north, and the Cocos Islands 716 miles away. About 2,000 miles away in Calcutta, India, numerous riverboats were sunk from the upheaval in the Bay of Bengal caused by Krakatoa's eruption. The noise from the climactic explosion on August 27 was heard as far away as Alice Springs in central Australia and the island nation of Madagascar off Africa's southeastern coast. The cinders and smoke spouted into the air migrated into the higher reaches of the atmosphere and then circumvented the globe. For the next several years, weather patterns around the world were disrupted and several regions of the earth enjoyed stunning red sunsets.

Krakatoa is noteworthy for being one of the first global media events, as underwater cables that connected parts of Indonesia to other areas of the world enabled the media, particularly Reuters, to spread the news of the disaster to a wide audience in a short period of time. In addition, many of the Dutch settlers in the region wrote down detailed records of the event as it happened, providing scientists with valuable information related to the eruption. The Krakatoa eruption remains one of the most devastating natural disasters in the history of the world.

MLA "Krakatoa eruption (1883)." World Geography: Understanding a Changing World.ABC-CLIO, 2015. Web. 20 Sept. 2015.