JAKARTA, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- Indonesian meteorology and geophysics agency has found new cracks at the Krakatau Child volcano in Sunda Strait, which is potential to culminate in landslides when strong tremors occur during eruption, top official of the agency said.
Krakatau Child volcano's eruption triggered underwater landslides on Dec. 22 that resulted in a tsunami, killing over 400 people along the coast of the strait.
Head of the agency Dwikorita Karnawati revealed on Wednesday that long narrow spaces between parts of the volcano were detected through photographs shot from the air at the southward of the crater.
"These are potentially to develop into landslides or underwater landslides when tremors happen if eruption takes place," Dwikorita said.
She said the scale of tsunami to be triggered will be smaller, as the volume of the area potentially to slide was relatively small.
"The eruption activities have scale down, but the volcano's alert level remains at the second highest," she was quoted by a local media on Wednesday.
The tsunami at the end of last year devastated provinces of Banten and Lampung, leaving a total of more than 40,000 people injured and a total of 2,752 houses damaged, as well as a total of 510 ships destroyed, according to the national disaster management agency.
The tidal waves rattled a 312.75 km long of coastal area of the strait, according to the meteorology and geophysics agency.
Since July, Krakatau Child volcano has experienced "a strombolian" eruption type, meaning that the volcanic activity produces frequent moderate eruption, according to volcanologists.
The agency has issued a warning to stay away from the coastal areas along Sunda Strait with no go-zone of 1 km from the coast for fear of a second tsunami.
Krakatau Child is one of the 129 active volcanoes in Indonesia, a vast archipelagic nation home to 17,500 islands, which sits on a vulnerable quake-hit zone so called "the Pacific Ring of Fire."
