After the eruption of Mount Semeru which occurred on December 4, 2021, many phenomena occurred, one of which was cold lava flooding.
It was recently reported that cold lava floods occurred again in the Candipuro area, Lumajang Regency on Tuesday (11/1).
In an amateur video, it can be seen how a very heavy flow of cold lava floods carrying materials from rocks, sand to tree trunks as a result, a truck belonging to a sand miner was dragged and almost rolled over.
Luckily there were no casualties in the incident. Previously these sand miners had been warned not to carry out activities in the Mount Semeru area because it was still dangerous.
So what is cold lava flood and what are its effects? Cold lava also known as lava flow is a mixture of silt and cold water composed of volcanic ash, large rocks, and other debris.
It has a cold nature because this lava mixes with water or mud, thereby eliminating the hot lava properties as explained from geography.
Cold water mixed with lava will make hot lava cool. As a result of being mixed with cold water, the cold lava will be gray in color and have a slightly thick texture.
In addition, cold lava also flows through the prepared channel. Usually when it erupts, the lava is deliberately flowed into the river so that it will become cold lava.
However, when the quantity of cold lava cannot be accommodated by the river flow, the cold lava will overflow, and go to the surrounding area. Usually the place where the cold lava overflows is the residential area around the riverbanks.
The speed of this cold lava is also very high up to about 100 km/hour, with that speed it can crush or bury anything in its path.
This is because of the large boulder so that it can damage anything in its path in a short time. The losses caused by this cold lava flood are much greater when compared to ordinary water floods.
Quoting from several sources, the following are the losses caused by cold lava floods:
1. Damage to housing, fields, rice fields, farms and bridges due to the very fast flow of lava which also carries large boulders, which can easily be destroyed.
2. Houses and other buildings are submerged in mud because of the large volume of water like a flood that hits.
3. Infrastructure and even telecommunications can also be damaged due to the brunt of the cold lava flow which is very large and strong.
4. The economy has stopped, roads have been cut off, residents cannot carry out their usual activities.