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Indonesian volcano Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki erupts, burning homes and killing at least 10 on Flores island
Maumere, Indonesia — Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency said Monday that at least 10 people had died as a series of volcanic eruptions widens on the remote island of Flores. The eruption at Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki around midnight spewed thick brownish ash as high as 6,500 feet into the air and hot ashes hit several villages, burning down houses including a convent of Catholic nuns, said Firman Yosef, an official at the Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki monitoring post.
Yosef said volcanic material was thrown up to 3.7 miles from the volcano’s crater, blanketing nearby villages and towns with tons of volcanic debris and forcing residents to flee.
Rescuers were still searching for more bodies buried under collapsed houses, said Abdul Muhari, the National Disaster Management Agency’s spokesperson. Muhari said all the bodies, including a child, were found with a 2.4-mile radius of the crater. He said at least 10,000 people had been affected by the eruption in six villages.
Some people fled to relatives’ houses while the local government was readying schools to use as temporary shelters.
The country’s volcano monitoring agency increased the volcano’s alert status to the highest level and more than doubled the exclusion zone to a 4.3-mile radius after midnight on Monday as eruptions became more frequent.
A nun in Hokeng village died and another was missing, said Agusta Palma, the head of the Saint Gabriel Foundation that oversees convents on the majority-Catholic island.
“Our nuns ran out in panic under a rain of volcanic ash in the darkness,” Palma said.
Photos and videos circulated on social media showed tons of volcanic debris covering houses up to their rooftops in villages including Hokeng, where hot volcanic material set fire to buildings.
Lewotobi Laki-laki is one of a pair of stratovolcanoes in the East Flores district of East Nusa Tenggara province known locally as the husband — “Laki-laki” means man — and wife mountains. Its mate is Lewotobi Perempuan, or woman.
About 6,500 people were evacuated in January after Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki began erupting, spewing thick clouds and forcing the government to close the island’s Frans Seda Airport. No casualties or major damage were reported, but the airport has remained closed since then due to seismic activity.
In a video conference on Monday, Muhammad Wafid, the head of Geology Agency at the Energy and Mineral Resources ministry said there was a different character between January’s eruption and Monday’s eruption due to a blockage of magma in the crater, which reduced detectible seismic activity while building up pressure.
“The eruptions that occurred since Friday were due to the accumulation of hidden energy,” Wafid said.
It’s Indonesia’s second volcanic eruption in as many weeks. West Sumatra province’s Mount Marapi, one of the country’s most active volcanos, erupted on Oct. 27, spewing thick columns of ash at least three times and blanketing nearby villages with debris, but no casualties were reported. An eruption of Mount Marapi at the end of 2023 did claim at least 23 lives.
Lewotobi Laki-laki is one of the 120 active volcanoes in Indonesia, an archipelago nation that’s home to some 280 million people. The country is prone to earthquakes, landslides and volcanic activity because it sits on the “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines around the Pacific Ocean.
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Boeing machinists vote to accept labor contract, ending 7-week strike
Boeing’s 33,000 unionized machinists on Wednesday voted to approve the plane manufacturer’s latest contract offer, ending a seven-week strike that had halted production of most of the company’s passenger planes.
The union said 59% voted to accept the contract. Members have the option of returning to work as soon as Wednesday, but must be back at work by Tuesday, November 12, the union said in a statement.
Union leaders had strongly urged members to ratify the latest proposal, which would boost wages by 38% over the four-year life of the contract, up from a proposed increase of 35% that members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) had rejected last month.
The revised deal also provides a $12,000 cash bonus to hourly workers and increased contributions to retirement savings plans. The enhanced offer doesn’t address a key sticking point in the contentious talks — restoration of pensions — but Boeing would raise its contributions to employee 401K plans.
Average annual pay for machinists, now $75,608, would climb to $119,309 in four years under the current offer, Boeing said.
The vote came after IAM members in September and October rejected lesser offers by the Seattle-based aerospace giant.
“In every negotiation and strike, there is a point where we have extracted everything we can in bargaining and by withholding our labor,” the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers stated last week in backing Boeing’s revised offer. “We are at that point now and risk a regressive or lesser offer in the future.”
Acting U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su has played an active role in the negotiations, after recently helping to end a days-long walkout that briefly closed East and Gulf Coast ports.
The Boeing strike that began on Sept. 13 marked the latest setback for the manufacturing giant, which has been the focus of multiple federal probes after a door plug blew off a 737 Max plane during an Alaska Airlines flight in January. The incident revived concerns about the safety of the aircraft after two crashed within five months in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people.
Boeing in July agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud for deceiving regulators who approved the 737 Max.
During the strike, Boeing was unable to produce any new 737 aircraft, which are made at the company’s assembly plants in the Seattle area. One major Boeing jet, the 787 Dreamliner, is manufactured at a nonunion factory in South Carolina.
The company last month reported a third-quarter loss of $6.1 billion.
contributed to this report.
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