SKIRMISHER

Getting their cue from the sophisticated workings of Tampax, Indonesian engineers have been dropping concrete balls into the mouth of a mud-spewing crater in Porong, Indonesia.

Most say the flow is unstoppable, but Indonesian specialists refuse to listen, and they have recently begun carrying out a scheme straight from a Hollywood movie: dropping nearly 1,500 concrete balls into the mouth of the mud volcano.

“We know lots of people think this is a crazy idea,” said Satria Bijaksana, a professor and one of three geologists behind the $130 million plan aimed at reducing the spew of the sludge by as much as 70 percent. “But we think it will work.”

Mud volcanoes are fairly common along volatile tectonic belts and in areas rich in oil and natural gas like Indonesia.

But the eruption just outside the city of Surabaya is exceptional because of the sheer volume of mud that has been surging each day from the hole — enough to fill 50 Olympic-size swimming pools. Twelve villages and 20 factories have been swallowed, with mud-caked roofs and the tops of lamp posts as the only reminders of what once was there.

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