The Gray Ooze That Ate the Indonesian Villages

For more than three months, the hot, noxious goop has spewed up through a crack in the earth at a natural-gas exploration site, swamping everything in its path.

The expanding, surreal gray lake with the stench of rotten eggs has enveloped more than 10 square miles of land in eastern Java, Indonesia's most densely populated island. The flow has forced 8,000 to 10,000 people from their homes, engulfed about a dozen factories, contaminated fish farms and intermittently closed a major highway.

Confusion has reigned over how to stop it. An effort to drill a series of relief wells was slow to begin and has thus far failed. With the mud continuing to gush, emergency crews have scrambled to put up earthen barriers to contain and redirect the flow away from villages. Some of the dams already have been breached, and officials are running out of space.

In a country reeling from a string of natural disasters, this man-made fiasco has thrown a fresh, harsh light on an overwhelmed government struggling to counter accusations of corruption and ineptitude.

Nerves have frayed over the slow and uneven response to the crisis by government agencies and Lapindo Brantas, the politically connected company with a controlling stake in the exploration project. Frustration spilled over last week when displaced villagers set fire to a camp of tents used by Lapindo workers.

Suyati, who, like many Indonesians, uses one name, watched anxiously for weeks as one of the barriers held the mud at bay -- temporarily.

"It flew very fast, like a tsunami," said Suyati, 57, recalling the day last month when the pent-up mud surged though the barrier.

"I was scared and I ran with my sick husband. My son and I had to carry him, because my husband is paralyzed. The mud was behind us

It is unclear what went wrong during the drilling of a 2-mile-deep exploration well. Several environmental and community groups have accused the company of shoddy work and lax oversight, saying a protective lining that could have prevented the disaster was not properly in place.

Company officials initially suggested the mudflow had resulted from an earthquake days before, but quickly abandoned the idea.

The company has since taken responsibility for the damage but won't say what caused it, citing a police investigation.