Mount Merapi Eruption, Biggest Yet, Kills 78

Mount Merapi, the Indonesian volcano, erupted in its largest explosion of the century, killing at least 78 people.

Massive molten lava and searing ash clouds shoot from the crater of Mount Merapi captured in this extended time exposure photograph taken from Klaten district in Central Java. Sonny Tumbelaka/AFP/Getty Images

Mount Merapi, the Indonesian volcano, erupted in its largest explosion of the century, raining hot ash, toxic gas and molten rock on villagers outside the government–imposed danger zone, killing at least 78 and badly burning scores of others, AP reports.

The eruption sent a pyroclastic flow—an avalanche of rock and superheated gasses as hot as 1400 degrees F—rushing down the mountainside and into the village of Bronggang, nine miles from the volcano’s crater, burying the village in ash up to a foot deep.

The heat was so great that people’s clothing melted to their skin.