Visible threat: Lava flowing from the crater of Mayon Volcano, as seen from Daraga town while alert level three remains at Albay province. — AP
A series of mild eruptions at the country’s most active volcano has prompted the evacuation of nearly 3,000 villagers from a danger zone on its foothills.
Authorities raised the five-step alert around Mayon Volcano in the northeastern province of Albay to level three on Tuesday after detecting intermittent rockfalls from its peak crater in recent days along with deadly pyroclastic flows – a fast-moving avalanche of super-hot rock fragments, ash and gas.
Alert level five would indicate that a major explosive eruption, often with violent ejections of ash and debris and widespread ashfall, is underway. The volcano previously erupted in June 2023.
“This is already an eruption, a quiet one, with lava accumulating up the peak and swelling the dome, which cracked in some parts and resulted in rockfalls, some as big as cars,” said Teresito Bacolcol, the country’s chief volcanologist.
He added it is too early to tell if Mayon’s restiveness would lead to a major and violent eruption given the absence of other key signs of unrest, like a spike in volcanic earthquakes and high levels of sulfur dioxide emissions.
Troops, police and disaster-mitigation personnel helped evacuate more than 2,800 villagers from 729 households inside a 6km radius from the volcano’s crater that officials have long designated a permanent danger zone, demarcated by concrete warning signs, officials said.
Another 600 villagers living outside the permanent danger zone have evacuated voluntarily to government-run emergency shelters to be safely away from the volcano, Claudio Yucot, regional director of the Office of Civil Defence, said.
Entry to the permanent danger zone in the volcano’s foothills is prohibited, but thousands of villagers have made it their home or maintained farms on and off for generations.
The 2,462m volcano is one of the Philippines’ top tourism draws because of its near-perfect cone shape. But it’s also the most active of the country’s 24 restive volcanoes – erupting 54 times since records began in 1616.
A terrifying symbol of Mayon’s deadly fury is the belfry of a 16th-century Franciscan stone church which protrudes from the ground in Albay. It’s all that’s left of a baroque church that was buried by volcanic mudflow along with the town of Cagsawa in an 1814 eruption which killed about 1,200 people, including many who sought refuge in the church, about 13km from the volcano.
The thousands of people who live within Mayon’s danger zone reflect the plight of many impoverished Filipinos who are forced to live in dangerous places across the archipelago – near active volcanoes like Mayon, on landslide-prone mountainsides, and in low-lying villages often engulfed by flash floods. — AP
