The name of the Krakatoa volcano is widely known, and the events of its eruption have been repeatedly used in literature and cinema. It was formed in the distant past on the seabed near the edge of the Sunda Graben and became part of the Indonesian island arc. Even in prehistoric times, as a result of a powerful eruption, the volcano was shattered, and the island of Krakatoa grew up in the formed caldera (six kilometers in diameter). It was a young volcanic structure, consisting of three volcanoes connected to each other - Rakata, Danan and Perbuvatan. As a result of the confluence of these cones, the island of Krakatoa increased to nine kilometers in length and up to five kilometers in width at an altitude of eight hundred meters.
The first ominous signal of an impending disaster came on May 20, 1883. On this day, after two centuries of sleep, Krakatoa awoke. A column of vapors, gases and dust rose into the sky to a height of eleven kilometers. The explosions, which followed one after another, were heard at a distance of up to two hundred kilometers. Then everything was quiet, but not for long.
The founder of Soviet volcanology V. I. Vlodavets wrote that “on August 26 at 13 o'clock the inhabitants of the island of Java, located at a distance of 160 kilometers from Krakatau, heard a noise like thunder. An hour later, a black cloud about 27 kilometers high rose over Krakatoa, frequent explosions were heard, and the noise was getting stronger."
The next day, August 27, 1883, the eruption was repeated. The roar of explosions was heard in Australia (at a distance of 3,600 kilometers) and even on the island of Rodriguez in the Indian Ocean, located almost five thousand kilometers from the volcano. Gases, vapors, debris, sand and dust rose to an altitude of almost eighty kilometers and scattered over an area of over 827 thousand square kilometers.
In Jakarta, the main city of Java, the rising ash eclipsed the sun to such an extent that it was almost completely dark. The finest dust reached the stratosphere, in which it spread throughout the Earth. This, in turn, has caused unusually red dawns and bright sunsets at dusk in many countries.
The monstrous explosion caused not only an air wave, but also a giant tidal wave - a tsunami up to forty meters high. Wherever the wave reached the shore, it brought devastating devastation with it. Many buildings were destroyed, crops perished in large areas, railway lines in Java were destroyed, in gardens and jungle, like simple chips, the trunks of ancient trees broke.
With all its force, the tidal wave hit the cities of Marak, Anyer, Tjaringan and completely destroyed them. Only a small part of the population in these cities survived a terrible catastrophe, and a total of 295 cities and villages on the coasts of Java and Sumatra were wiped out. Over 36 thousand people died, hundreds of thousands were left homeless, crushed by the tsunami.
An illustration of the power of the roaming forces of nature is the case of the Dutch Royal Navy gunboat Berow. It was carried by the tsunami from the coast at a distance of three kilometers and raised to a height of ten meters. The wave caused by the explosion went around the entire globe, even in the English Channel between France and England, instruments that measured the height of the tide recorded its individual effects. Off the Atlantic coast of France, the wave height reached thirty centimeters. Some seismological sources indicate that the wave was noted even in Panama, located 18,350 kilometers from Krakatoa.
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Several hundred people were burned by a cloud of hot gas, which was a lateral discharge from the eruption of Krakatoa. And even at a distance of forty kilometers its temperature was several hundred degrees.
The explosions continued throughout the night from 27 to 28 August, although their strength gradually weakened. Separate explosions occurred throughout the autumn of 1883, and only in February of the following year, Krakatoa calmed down.
In terms of the amount of water and rock transferred, the energy of the eruption of Krakatoa is equivalent to the explosion of several hydrogen bombs. During the eruption, at least eighteen cubic kilometers of rocks were thrown out. Two-thirds of them fell on an area with a radius of fifteen kilometers from the explosion, after which the sea (in particular, to the north of Krakatoa) became shallow and became unnavigable for large ships.
After the eruption, only the southern half of the cone of the Rakata volcano survived, and in place of the rest of the island in the ocean, a depression with a diameter of about seven kilometers was formed. At this point, a new volcano's cone emerged, which is slowly but steadily growing. By 1952, its summit had already risen seventy meters above sea level. This new island was named "Anak Krakatau" - "Child of Krakatau".
HUNDRED GREAT DISASTERS. ON THE. Ionina, M. N. Kubeev