“This kind of eruption, it will take about weeks, so we have to sustain the operations in the evacuation centers,” Albay Governor Al Francis Bichara told the ANC news channel, according to Reuters. “We need to use the calamity funds.”
The institute has recorded at least nine tremors in the area, four of which accompanied lava fountains from the volcano, according to Reuters. The activity could mean a possible hazardous eruption is coming within a few days.
Officials strongly advised people not to venture
“They say it’s beauty juxtaposed with danger,” Office of Civil Defense regional director Claudio Yucot said.
Albay officials declared a state of calamity in the province of more than a million people to allow more rapid disbursement of disaster funds, Nunez said.
“We have witnessed lava fountaining yesterday, that’s why we have additional families who evacuated due to the threat,” said Romina Marasigan, spokeswoman for the government’s main disaster-response agency.
Renato Solidum, who heads the volcanology institute, said the flows cascading down the volcano were not generated by an explosion from the crater with superheated lava, molten rocks and steam, but were caused by lava fragments breaking off from the lava flow and crashing on the lower slopes.
Scientists have not yet detected enough volcanic earthquakes of the type that would prompt them to raise the alert level to four on a scale of five, which would indicate an explosive eruption may be imminent, Solidum said. Emergency response officials previously said they may have to undertake forced evacuations if the alert is raised to four.
Mayon is in coconut-growing Albay province, about 210 miles southeast of Manila. With its near-perfect cone, it is popular with climbers and tourists but has erupted about 50 times in the last 500 years, sometimes violently.
In 2013, an ash eruption killed five climbers who had ventured near the summit despite warnings. Mayon’s first recorded eruption was in 1616 and the most destructive, in 1814, killed 1,200 people and buried the town of Cagsawa in volcanic mud.
The Philippines lies in the so-called “Ring of Fire,” a line of seismic faults surrounding the Pacific Ocean where earthquakes and volcanic activity are common.
