The Philippines’ most active volcano was spewing lava down its slopes on Monday, prompting officials to warn tens of thousands of villagers to be prepared to flee their homes if the gentle eruption turns into a powerful and life-threatening explosion.
More than 13,000 people have left the mostly poor farming communities within a 6km (3.7-mile) radius of Mount Mayon’s crater in mandatory evacuations since volcanic activity increased last week. But an unspecified number of people remain within the permanent danger zone below Mayon, an area long declared off-limits but where generations have lived and farmed because they had nowhere else to go.
The high-risk zone around Mayon, which began to expel lava on Sunday night, may be expanded should the eruption turn violent, said Teresito Bacolcol, the director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. He said if that happened, people in any expanded danger zone should be prepared to evacuate to emergency shelters.
“What we are seeing now is an effusive eruption,” Bacolcol said. “We are looking at this on a day-to-day basis.”
Associated Press journalists watched from a distance as lava flowed down the volcano’s south-eastern gullies for hours on Sunday night. People hurriedly stepped out of restaurants and bars in a seaside promenade in Legazpi, the capital of north-eastern Albay province about 8.5 miles (14km) from Mayon, many of them snapping pictures of the volcano that is a popular tourist site known for its picturesque conical shape.
Mayon’s renewed restiveness has also struck fear and brought new suffering.
Marilyn Miranda said she, her daughter and 75-year-old mother, who recently had a stroke, fled their home in a village within the danger zone in Guinobatan town on Thursday and sought shelter at a high school turned evacuation centre. Her nephew has been returning to their home each day, as have other men in their impoverished rural neighbourhood to guard their houses and farm animals, she said.
From the overcrowded evacuation centre they were terrified to see the bright red-orange lava streaks gushing down Mayon’s slope on Sunday night. “We had this feeling that our end is near,” Miranda said, breaking into tears.
Mayon’s new eruption was one of back-to-back tragedies that struck Amelia Morales and her family in recent days. Her husband died of an aneurism and other illnesses on Friday and she had to hold his funeral wake in a crowded emergency shelter in Guinobatan because she and her neighbours had been ordered to stay away from their community near Mayon.
“I need help to bury my husband because we don’t have any money left,” Morales, 63, said as she sat near her husband’s white wooden coffin under a flimsy open tent in a corner of the evacuation centre. “I cannot do anything but cry.”
With its peak often shrouded by the wisps of passing clouds, the 2,462-metre (8,077ft) volcano appeared calm on Monday. Bacolcol said red hot lava was continuing to flow down its slopes but could not easily be seen under the bright sun.
The volcano had been raised to alert level 3 on a five-step warning system on Thursday, meaning it was in a state of high unrest and a hazardous eruption was possible within weeks or days.
With lava flowing gently down the volcano, Bacolcol said the alert level would stay at 3 but could be moved higher if the eruption suddenly turned perilous.
The highest alert, level 5, would mean a violent and life-threatening eruption was under way with ash plumes shooting into the sky and superheated pyroclastic streams endangering more communities in Mayon’s lush foothills.
Mayon is one of 24 active volcanoes in the Philippines. It last erupted violently in 2018, displacing tens of thousands of villagers. In 1814, an eruption buried entire villages and reportedly left more than 1,000 people dead.
The archipelago is lashed by about 20 typhoons and tropical storms a year and is located on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, the rim of seismic faults where most of the world’s earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur.
In 1991, Mount Pinatubo north of Manila blew its top in one of the biggest volcanic eruptions of the 20th century, killing hundreds of people.