Special For Sick Gunung Ruang Victims Now Transported By Helicopter

The condition of Mount Ruang in Sitaro Islands Regency, North Sulawesi, which is still emitting gray smoke based on air monitoring by the BNPB team using a helicopter, Saturday (4/5/2024). (ANTARA/HO-Pusdatinkom BNPB)

The latest data from the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) states that of the 12 thousand victims, there are still 5,719 people on Tagulandang Island at a radius of seven kilometers from the top of Mount Ruang and must be evacuated outside the island.

Now BNPB has started flying a special helicopter unit to transport victims of the eruption of Mount Ruang in the Sitaro Islands, North Sulawesi who are sick.

Head of the BNPB Disaster Data, Information and Communication Center Abdul Muhari in Jakarta, Saturday, said that because the heli transport is limited, its use is only devoted to evacuating or transporting sick victims.

For the process of evacuating victims as a whole, BNPB still relies on assistance in transporting sea crossings and land transportation belonging to the Indonesian Navy, Basarnas, Kodam XIII/Merdeka, North Sulawesi Police and so on.

"So helicopters are flown for emergency purposes that need immediate treatment, such as the evacuation of sick victims," he said, as reported by ANTARA, Saturday, May 4.

In addition, he said, the helicopter was also starting to function by the BNPB team to monitor the activity of Mount Ruang directly from the air.

As was done on Saturday morning at 07.56 WITA, according to him, the BNPB team managed to monitor the air from Manado - Tamulandang without any obstacles or disturbances during the trip.

He explained that one helicopter has actually been alerted since April 20, 2024 at the Klapit Stadium Football Field, Manado to help accelerate all efforts to deal with the emergency impact of the eruption of Mount Ruang.

However, due to the conditions around Mount Ruang within certain distances that have not allowed it, the BNPB helicopter can only be flown now on the Manado route to Tagulandang Island.

Apart from that, Abdul hopes that Mount Ruangan activities can continue to decline and return to normal soon so that all social activities of the surrounding community can be normal and the regional economy will grow again.

Previously, the Geological Agency of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources reported that the activity of Mount Ruang was still ongoing as a result of observations made on Friday (3/5) night.

During these observations, the Geological Agency team was still recording earthquake eruptions, shallow volcanic earthquakes, deep and distant tectonic earthquakes, as well as continuous tremors with relatively small energy.

Then, visual observations were also found that the crater smoke was white-gray with thick and high intensity in the range of 100-300 meters from the crater peak. However, the condition of Mount Ruang activity was relatively decreasing when compared to the eruption on April 17 and April 30, 2024.