SLEMAN, Indonesia - Java‘s towering Mount Merapi has been smokey, officials urge villagers to flee, but Mrs. Atmorejo is
more concern about the animals
living on the slopes of the mountains because they need warning for the coming disaster.Government officials including Yogyakarta provincial governor Hamengkubuwono X, the Sultan of Yogyakarta, have urged residents to leave the foothills of the volcano, which claimed more than 60 lives in 1994, and 1,300 in a 1930
eruption. But so far, despite growing tremors, there has been no official order.Many residents of the Mount Merapi area trust to traditional ways to detect a coming eruption like animals moving downhill or visible lightning bolts on top of the mystical peak.Vulcanologists say the mountain, overlooking the ancient royal city of Yogyakarta and the heavily visited Borobudur temple complex, may erupt at the end of the month.Mrs. Atmorejo said her bamboo-woven foodstall, which sits on a riverbank with the imposing Merapi as its backdrop, serves labourers who dig gravel from the river as a living.Indonesia has successfully moved more than 600 people away from the restive volcano but this is only a fraction of the total 14,000 villagers, which includes villages in Central Java and Yogyakarta provinces.Children, women and the elderly are the main people being shifted to a new area although some of them return home to feed their livestock during daytime.