On Monday, Mt Agung continued to spew volcanic materials that incapacitated air travel to and from Bali.
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·5 minutes read
Usually, it takes only one hour to travel from Surabaya to Bali. Now, visitors must endure 15 hours to get to the Island of the Gods. Mt Agung’s volcanic ash has completely incapacitated Bali’s normally busy air transportation routes.
Firman had been sitting for three hours on the bus that would take him from Surabaya to Denpasar. However, the bus had yet to depart Pasuruan, East Java. Firman was exhausted, but there was nothing he could do. He said he was resigned to his bad luck. “The bus conductor said that we would probably arrive in Bali on Tuesday morning. We left [Surabaya] on Monday at 2:30 p.m.,” he said.
On Monday (27/11), Firman was supposed to fly to Bali on a Citilink plane for a business meeting. However, the flight was abruptly cancelled, as Mt Agung erupted. The volcanic ash from the eruption makes it unsafe for airplanes to fly over Bali.
Firman’s first alternative was to hop on a train to Banyuwangi and then cross the strait by ferry from Ketapang Harbor to Bali. However, he could not do that, as the railway in East Java’s southern and eastern areas were flooded due to two days of heavy rain in Sidoarjo regency.
As a result, journeying by train from Surabaya to Banyuwangi was impossible. There was only one option left: taking a bus. Unfortunately for Firman, his bus was stuck in Pasuruan because of flooding. By Monday afternoon, he should have been in Situbondo, over 200 kilometers from Surabaya, but he was still stuck in Pasuruan, only about 60 kilometers from Surabaya.
Another Surabaya resident, Hengky Budi, said that he was also exhausted. His original plan to flying to Denpasar on business was cancelled because of the Mt Agung eruption. “My flight was scheduled to leave at 7:55 a.m. [on Monday] but, as I arrived at the airport, the airline officials told me that my flight was cancelled because of the weather. They offered me either a rescheduled flight or a refund. I took the refund,” Hengky said.
In an interview with Kompas at Ketapang Harbor, Hengky said that he eventually chose to take a bus to Bali. The usually 2-hour journey turned into a journey of a whopping 15 hours.
Brazilian soccer player Otavio Dutra also chose to take land transportation. Dutra said he was taking his wife, daughter and parents on a road trip from Bali to Surabaya. He estimated the trip would take around 12 hours. “There is no other way. I have tried to book a train from Banyuwangi to Surabaya, but I could not find any,” he told Kompas at Bali’s I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport.
“From Surabaya, we will fly to Jakarta, as my parents have to return to Brazil [Tuesday] night,” he added.
Two German travelers, Michael and Anne, said they had planned to leave Bali for Surabaya on Monday. Because of the eruption, they chose to extend their stay in Bali. Michael said that he had known of Mt Agung’s increasing volcanic activity, but insisted on traveling to Bali on vacation.
Praying
On Monday, Mt Agung continued to spew volcanic materials that incapacitated air travel to and from Bali. In Badung, I Gusti Ngurah Rai airport in has been closed since 7:15 a.m. on Monday, Central Indonesian Time. Some 455 flights were cancelled and another 10 were diverted from the airport to Surabaya, Jakarta, Singapore and Australia.
The volcanic ash has stranded 59,000 travelers at the airport. Ngurah Rai Airport Authority head Herson said that the airport was closed for safety reasons, as volcanic ash from Mt Agung had entered the air space around the airport.
State-run air navigation company PT AirNav Indonesia’s Denpasar general manager, Eko Setiawan, said that the pilots of two separate flights mentioned on Sunday evening (26/11) that they smelled sulfur at an altitude of 9,000 feet (2.7 kilometers) over southern Bali.
As a result, Bali’s tourism activities have been somewhat muted in these last few days. A number of tour and travel agencies said that they had cancelled numerous events in Bali up to December. Tourism industry players chose to temporarily close the island’s tourism sites. White water rafting on the Telaga Waja River is temporarily unavailable, as the river is filled with volcanic sludge. Dive tours in Tulamben are also closed, as the offshore waters were included in the eruption’s red zone. A thin layer of volcanic ash shrouds the entire island.
Nevertheless, such hardships bring about a sense of solidarity. Hotels in the Bali Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association (PHRI) agreed to provide a free one-night stay for guests whose flights on Monday were cancelled. “If the tourists need to stay longer, there will be discounts in accordance with the hotel policy,” said PHRI Bali chairman Tjokorda Oka Artha Ardana Sukawati.
Those stranded on the island chose to respond to the disaster wisely. The passengers of cancelled flights said that they accepted the emergency situation, despite the problems they had to deal with. They prayed for their own safety and that of the millions of affected local people. Hopefully, the disaster will soon pass.