The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Archipelago | Mon, August 12 2013, 12:41 PM
The National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) says it will distribute 100 tons of rice to some 3,000 people evacuated from the slopes of Mount Rokatenda in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) after it erupted on Saturday morning.
BNPB's NTT head, Tini Thadeus, said the agency also had distributed 10,000 boxes of food for people temporarily sheltered on Palue Island in Sikka regency, kontan.co.id reported on Monday.
Tini added that officials were searching for the bodies of two children who went missing after the eruption.
The eruption, which lasted seven minutes, occurred at 4:27 a.m. local time Saturday, claimed the lives of at least five people who were overcome by hot lava. Only three of the five bodies have been recovered, with the remaining two -- the missing children -- unaccounted for.
Mount Rokatenda is one of 129 active volcanoes in Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands with a 240 million population. Indonesia is prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity because it sits along the Pacific "Ring of Fire," a horseshoe-shaped series of fault lines. (hrl)