His name is synonymous with disaster. Krakatoa It meant one of the greatest natural catastrophes in history, since the eruption of the volcano on the island of the same name killed 36,000 people and sank almost 70% of the place.
It happened in 1883. Since May of that year, the activity of the Krakatoa volcano, in the Indian Ocean, was constant, but only with smoke and tremors. But between August 26 and 27, the Apocalypse arrived for the local population.
Krakatoa was the name of the group of volcanic islands, almost all of which have now disappeared, between the Sonda Strait (located between Java and Sumatra), in the southwest of Indonesia. The main island was Rakata, which assumed the same name as the volcano, Krakatoa.
The explosions were heard more than three thousand kilometers away, in Australia, creating several tsunamis as a result of the main eruptions, of August 27.
According to modern scientific records, it reached magnitude 6 on the volcanic explosivity index (VEI), whose highest scale is 8 degrees.
The volcano caused more than 36 thousand deaths, not only from lava or smoke, but also from tsunamis that swept through the neighboring coasts of Sumatra and Java.
The activity of the Krakatoa volcano, one of the deadliest in modern history
According to the portal Exploratory Echo, a volcano is a fissure in the earth’s crust on which a cone of molten and solid matter accumulates, which is thrown through the chimney from inside the earth.
When activity occurs in a volcano, it is said to be in eruption.
It was not the first time that eruptions had occurred in the Indian archipelago: Before Christ, in the years 417 and 535, at least two events were recorded.
But that of 1883 was marked as the deadliest in the area, which was then called the Dutch East Indies, currently Indonesia.
The reports of seismic activity indicate that until February 1884 there were earthquakes in the place, although more recent data indicates that they only happened until October 1883.
This year, 2022, there was a new eruption, but it left only enormous smoke and lava over the area, now uninhabited.