Man Made Mud Bath in Indonesia

Man Made Mud Bath in Indonesia
On October 6th, a natural gas well exploded in Indonesia leaving eight villages submerged in residue. The mud has already spread over a square mile and a half and it shows no signs of slowing. There have been 13,000 people evacuated from their homes and this number is constantly rising along with the residue. The company drilled thousands of feet to get to the natural gas and if charged the damages amount to about 1 billion dollars.
This recent event can be paralleled to the not so recent eruption of Mount Lamington in Papua New Guinea. On January 18th 1951, Mount Lamington began to erupt. Three days later the northern side of the island had been blown away from the devastation blows. The damage extended for a radius of 14km. The few people in this perimeter were burnt to death. While the volcanic eruption of Mount Lamington was a natural disruption, the situation in Indonesia was a man made one. However the manner in which they sequence of events got progressively worse is very similar. While both parties were completely unaware of the impeding events, once alarmed of what was occurring, little was able to be done on Mount Lamington to prevent further casualties. In Indonesia however, they were able to evacuate people from their houses who were slowly being submerged. The two events mentioned show that natural disasters tend to repeat themselves and as time passes it becomes apparent that people have become more aware of how to deal with these given situations.