Merapi - Mountain of Fire

I was reading the news on BBC and they had this article about a volcano in Indonesia - Merapi, meaning Mountain of Fire! Although I hear they are dangerous, and clearly it is, witnessing a volcano erupting is one of the things I would hope to once witness with my eyes - and not on TV. The list also includes:

• seeing a tornado
• earthquake
• flood

An experience is an experience, and living through a natural disaster and seeing what others all over the world suffer -sometimes on a daily basis- is one real experience.

So that articles goes on and talks about how scientists cannot yet tell when a volcano is going to errupt. Shouldnt this be a top research concern in that area? Especially since the Asian Ring of Fire is located there and Indonesia has 129 active volcanoes. What is so hard about predicting? Scientists can predict the weather, are they trying to say that with all these super computers in the world, nobody can find a way to predict when a volcano will errupt? Even if the prediction was off by a week or even a month, that is still way better than living not knowing when the place will be flooded with red hot molten lava! Did you know that lava can flow 40km before it stops, and then a mud slide continues until 80km - that is almost the distance from Hamilton to Toronto! So why can't they predict? Maybe the hard part is measuring the force of the lava building up inside the volcano, but afer that what is the problem? A solution to this is one thing scientists should be working on and definitely not bunker buster bombs like some scientists are busy doing...