By SPA
Porong, Indonesia : A mud volcano that forced more than 15,000 people to abandon their homes on the Indonesian island of Java in 2006 has breached the barriers built to contain it, causing further damage, ANTARA quoted police as saying.
Residents in Porong in East Java province fled from their homes in panic late on Thursday when hot, foul-smelling mud began to flow into the area, covering the nearby railway tracks and a main road.
“At least 10 vehicles were buried by one-meter (yard) deep mud, including mine,” said Andi Yudianto, a local traffic police chief.
The newly affected area is about 20 km (12 miles) from Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city. But thousands of homes and factories in an area four times the size of Monaco have been submerged by the hot mud since it first started to erupt in May 2006.
The disaster occurred about 200 meters from a gas exploration well operated by PT Lapindo Brantas, just two days after an earthquake hit the city of Yogyakarta in Central Java.