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Unusual Historic Crises and Calamities

Khalid Elhassan April 16, 2020 34 min

24. Deadly Lahars

Mount Kelut’s crater in 1919. Museum of World Cultures

In 1586, an eruption emptied Mount Kelut’s crater lake, resulting in devastating lahars, or mud flows. By the time things quieted down, about 10,000 people had been killed. Kelut then behaved itself without major eruptions and significant devastation for over three centuries, during which the volcano’s crater refilled with water and turned into a crater lake.

That period of relative peace ended on May 19^th, 1919, when Kelut exploded yet once again, in another devastating eruption. An estimated 38 million cubic meters of boiling water and steam blew up from Kelut’s crater lake, and caused massive flows of hot mud, or lahars. The mud traveled for about 30 miles, destroying about 100 villages in its path. By the time it stopped, an estimated 5100 people had been killed.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.