In late May 2006, an unusual disaster befell part of the Indonesian island of Java: out of the blue, the area was flooded by a mud volcano. Not a mudflow racing down your typical spits-fire-and-ash volcano, but a natural eruption of mud.
It’s been erupting ever since. Almost 40,000 people have now been displaced by the flood of mud, and almost $3 billion in damages and associated costs (like levee construction to limit the flooded area). The obvious question on everyone’s mind has been what triggered this strange disaster, since there was no history of mud eruptions in the area. This goes beyond academic curiosity as, despite a suspicious earthquake, it seems the most likely culprit was human activity.
Just two days before the eruption began, there was an even worse natural disaster in the region. A magnitude 6.3 earthquake, centered less than 300 kilometers away, killed almost 6,000 people. Although a two-day delay would be a little difficult to explain, one hypothesis for the mud eruption was that the mud was created by liquefaction— where earthquake-driven shaking turns susceptible sediments into mobile muds.
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