The Philippines’ most active volcano began spewing lava on Sunday, putting thousands of people on heightened alert for the possibility of a violent explosion that would force them to suddenly evacuate from their homes.
More than 12,000 villagers have left their homes so far in mandatory evacuations from the mostly poor farming communities within a 6km radius of the Mayon volcano’s crater in north-eastern Albay province. The evacuations began after the volcano begun showing signs of renewed restlessness last week.
Authorities cautioned that thousands more remained within the permanent danger zone below Mayon, which has long been declared off limits.
As the volcano began to expel lava on Sunday night, the director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the high-risk zone around Mayon might be expanded, should the eruption turn violent.
Teresito Bacolcol said that if that happened, people in any expanded danger zone should be prepared to evacuate to emergency shelters.
Albay was placed under a state of emergency on Friday to allow for quicker distribution of any disaster relief funds in the event of a major eruption.
A key tourist draw, Mayon is one of the country’s 24 active volcanoes. It last erupted violently in 2018, displacing tens of thousands of villagers.
On Sunday, authorities and villagers also began moving large numbers of cows and water buffaloes from high-risk farms to 25 temporary grazing areas a safe distance away.
They followed more than 12,600 villagers who moved to emergency shelters last week, when Mayon began spewing superheated gas and producing heavy ashfall in a sign of a possible major eruption imminent within days or weeks.
The cattle evacuations underscore the government’s dilemma in dealing with threats from the sprawling archipelago’s active volcanoes. Located in the so-called Pacific “ring of fire”, a region prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the Philippines is also hit by an average of about 20 typhoons and storms a year, making the south-east Asian nation one of the world’s most disaster-prone.
In 1814, Mayon’s eruption buried entire villages and reportedly left more than 1,000 people dead. But many of Albay’s people have accepted the volcano’s sporadic fury as part of their lives.
One resident told the Associated Press that many businesses in the province had grown rich from diverse tourist activities that had sprung from Mayon, including sightseeing tours around the volcano.
“We’re not scared of it,” the 76-year-old said. “We’ve learned to live with it.”
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