KALIURANG, 14 May 2006 - Mount Merapi belched out massive clouds of black smoke and lava flows scorched fresh scars in its slopes, but many villagers ignored warnings of a major eruption and returned home to tend animals and crops. Even as the volcano's activity increased, scores of curious onlookers traveled by motorcycle, car and foot to its slopes, eager to see from a safe distance the mountain's awesome power.

Vulcanologists raised Merapi's alert status to the highest level on Saturday after it began spewing burning ash, rock and red-hot gases, and thousands of women, children and the elderly were immediately shuttled by bus and trucks to emergency shelters. "I didn't need to think twice," said Ariani, an aging woman at one shelter who said she did not know her age. "They said move, and I moved."

14 May 2006: The Merapi volcano releases a huge cloud of hot gas, as seen from Pakem village on the outskirts of Yogyakarta.

Some men refused to leave, saying they wanted to protect their homes late Saturday, even as glowing magma from the volcano's cauldron lit up the clouds surrounding the peak and as cascades of molten red stone tumbled down the mountainside. Police manned roadblocks Sunday preventing vehicles from getting within six to eight kilometers of the volcano's crater, but allowed villagers to return to tend to land and animals, advising them to leave again by nightfall. "My feeling is it will not blow at this time," said Budi, a 30-year-old farmer, who came back to cut grass to give to his cows.

More than 4,500 people living in villages closest to the crater or next to rivers, where hot lava is more likely to flow down, had been evacuated by Sunday. But many young men were staying put, said Widi Sutikno, the official coordinating the emergency response. "I cannot force them," he said. "All I can do is tell them to keep looking up at the mountain and have a motorbike ready." Sutikno said there were no plans to immediately move some 18,000 living lower down the slopes who are not considered in immediate danger.

Sutikno said the major threat this time around was scalding gas clouds, which move down the mountain at 900 kilometers an hour scorching everything in their path. Thousands spent Sunday packed into emergency shelters -- schools, government buildings and mosques -- in villages lower down the slopes of the nearly 3,000-meter high peak in the heart of Indonesia's densely populated Java Island.

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