Here, he worked fast. Incipient panics got short shrift: "No tsunami seen in Banggai. Please don't spread hoaxes." Fake images were denounced. ("This eruption is in South America. Ignore and don't spread.") Talk of "portents" was firmly shot down. ("The mountain peak is clouded with altocumulus lenticularis...due to a whirlwind at the top...No connection with mysticism or politicsahead of the election.")

As a result, he helped Indonesians feel safer. Jokowi, the president, publicly praised him, which was almost as good a moment as when he at last met the singer Raisa, on whom he had such a crush that he included her Twitter handle in more than 90 of his disaster tweets. He claimed his only motive was to get them retweeted to her 8m followers. Of course! With all this whirling round him, he was also cheerfully facing disaster of another sort. In 2018 he was diagnosed with Stage 4 lungcancer, though he had never smoked. He could not have foreseen it; Nature was unpredictable. Science helped him understand it, but could not cure it.

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