The land for 10 years was attacked by mud

In the first months after the Sidoarjo disaster in Indonesia, the crater averaged 98 million liters of boiling mud every day, swallowing 12 villages and losing nearly 40,000 people.

Every 6 am, Muslimah, 45 years old, porridge and porridge pressed for husband and children. After the meal, she wore a cap and started working. As many people in East Java lost their homes by other mud volcanoes , the Muslimah made a living as a motorbike taxi driver (ojek). Passengers of the Muslimah are tourists who come to see the ruined scene where her family once lived.

Currently, mud covers more than 6500 km ² . Some parts of dry mud create many cracks, while others are wet. At the edge of the strip, white smoke still rises from the crater, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Although 10 years have passed, the Muslimah still remembers the morning of May 2006, when the boiling mud and gas gas exploded violently from the ground at Sidoarjo, a small district in East Java, Indonesia."I was horrified," she said. "The scene was scary at the time. Mud surged like a black tower high up to the sky."

Over time, wet mud continued to flow out from a single point, flooding homes, fields, and factories, while the villagers hastily packed up their belongings and left. Wet mud has been constantly erupting since then. Within a month, the Muslimah's house was completely submerged.

The mud at Sidoarjo is the longest disaster Indonesia has ever faced. Every year on May 29, those who lost their homes celebrate the eruption.

Houses in Sidoarjo district, Indonesia, submerged under liquid mud.(Photo: Blogspot).

According to the Sidoarjo Mud Flood Recovery Authority (BPLS), a government organization was established in 2007 to monitor recovery after the disaster, in the first months, the average crater sprayed 98 million liters of mud. boil for a day. This speed then dropped to 26-57 million liters. Over the past decade, boiling mud swallowed 12 villages, leaving 39,000 homeless. In many places around the place where the mud is flooded, methane gas leaks with the risk of exploding with just one spark, although over time, this risk is decreasing.

Not only did visitors travel to Sidoarjo to visit, scientists appeared here to measure and collect specimens. So far, experts still debate the origin of this disaster. Indonesia is a country famous for volcanic and seismic activities. Some argue that the magnitude 6.3 earthquake in Jogjakarta city, 257km away just two days before the eruption, triggered the disaster.

Most likely the unit is responsible for the flooding disaster in Sidoarjo, Lapindo Brantas , an oil company that has been searching for gas at a location 244 meters away. "We are 99% convinced that the rigging hypothesis is reasonable," the New York Times quoted Mark Tingay, a geological scientist at the University of Adelaide, Australia, the lead author of the study of mud floods. in Nature Geoscience last year.

"At present, we think that mud will not stop flowing. At first, many people tried to prevent mud from erupting. Researchers and technicians made many petitions, but there was no successful option." Riko Aditya, head of the monitoring team for activities at BPLS, said. "Now, our goal is just to prevent mud from flowing out."

The disaster area is surrounded by compacted earth dykes that last nearly 16 km. With capital from Lapindo and the Indonesian government, this barrier was built, remodeled and upgraded later, because the mud layer continued to rise. In July 2015, BPLS estimates the area contains more than 40 million cubic meters of mud, compared to 30 million cubic meters in 2010. "The only solution at the moment is to suck mud," Riko said.

A mud dredging camp was born in Sidoarjo. Sludge suction to discharge into Porong River is still the only viable mitigation option.

Disaster impact greatly on the water environment. Dewi Hidayati, a professor of biology at the nearby Institute of Technology in Surabaya City, analyzed the survival of fish in the Porong River from 2010 to 2013. "Downstream of the waste water area, fish species dominate. "These species are able to adapt to the mud. The rest are dead , " Hidayati said. "Mud also alters their habitat. For example, fish spawning is more difficult now because the riverbed is covered with mud. Fish species are under pressure."

A number of studies track changes in the surrounding area of ​​mudflats, from biodiversity to land subsidence. According to Hidayati, although worrying, the mud has not caused any direct impact on human health, but more thorough research is needed.