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Ternate, North Maluku. Residents here are beginning to suffer from upper respiratory tract infections as a result of the ongoing eruption of Mount Gamalama.

“Three of my children have been suffering from ISPA [upper respiratory tract infections] since yesterday. The doctor says it’s because they’ve breathed in too much volcanic ash from Mount Gamalama,” Salim, a Ternate resident, said on Wednesday.

Gamalama, which forms the entire island of Ternate, the provincial capital, began spewing silica ash 1,700 meters into the air above the city on Sunday night.

Salim said that since the eruption began, raining ash onto the city, he had tried to secure masks to protect his children. However, the supplies available from public health authorities are very limited, he said.

Officials confirmed the shortage earlier this week, and said they had prioritized residents in the worst-affected areas in distributing their initial stock of 3,000 masks.

On Wednesday, however, relief was reportedly on the way from the closest major city, Manado, the capital of North Sulawesi, in the form of 50,000 more masks.

“Those masks are expected to arrive in Ternate tonight by ship. They’ve been sent from Manado,” said Ternate’s deputy mayor, Arifin Djafar.

He said the city planned to stock up with 150,000 masks to anticipate the possibility of a lengthy eruption.

Officials have been forced to bring in supplies by ship since the volcanic ash, an aviation hazard, forced the island’s airport to close.

Ternate’s port saw crushes of travelers crowding around the ticket windows, most of them having just received refunds from airlines such as Garuda Indonesia, Sriwijaya Air and Batavia Air, Kompas.com reported.

Many travelers hoped to ride either the Bunda Maria ferry 300 kilometers to Manado, or the Lambelu ferry to Bitung, also in North Sulawesi, where they could continue their journeys originally booked to Jakarta, Surabaya, and Makassar.

The head of Ternate’s health office, Nurbaity Marasabesi, said that in addition to respiratory ailments, residents were complaining of eye irritation, itchiness and diarrhea.

The threat of diarrhea results from volcanic ash contaminating water supplies in area outside the main business district, where piped water is not available and supplies are collected by hand from natural springs.

Arifin, the deputy mayor, said officials were taking steps to address the problem.

“We have instructed the state water company to distribute fresh water to residents on the slopes of Mount Gamalama … because springs have been polluted with ash,” he said.

A prominent former resident of the city was Alfred Russel Wallace, who in 1858 sent his “Ternate essay,” which introduced natural selection to Charles Darwin. That prompted Darwin to present both Wallace’s and his own writings to the Royal Society in London, giving birth to the modern understanding of evolution.

Antara