Ghost Village of Sinabung

North Sumatra, Indonesia, 2017

© Roni Bintang

From 2013 to 2015, I covered the eruption of Mount Sinabung and spent months there, while the mountain was belching out clouds of steam and dust. Four years later in October 2017, I went back to the villages where I took photos before, and this is what I discovered.

Thousands of people have been unable to return to their homes, leaving whole villages abandoned. Some media call these abandoned places "ghost villages".

In Indonesia, there are 120 active volcanoes. Mount Sinabung slept for 400 years before waking up in 2010. The small villages around the foot of the mountain were successful farming communities, growing vegetables and raising cattle, and meeting for cultural ceremonies in the jabu (community hall).

Life changed in 2014, when Sinabung’s deadliest eruption killed at least 16 villagers as lava and ash spewed into the air. Now, it is considered one of Indonesia’s most dangerous volcanoes.

The government has declared anywhere with in a 7km radius of the volcano too dangerous to live. Most villagers never returned to their homes, and some places like Berastepu have become ghost villages, overgrown by plants, visited by wild dogs and littered with reminders of the families who once lived there. 

Mount Sinabung remains active, and regularly frightens local communities with eruptions. Farmers will plant new crops, only to have them covered in ash, and everyone watches the mountain, wondering when the next big eruption will happen.