Thousands of villagers flee from erupting volcano in Philippines

Nearly 15,000 people have left the mostly poor farming communities within a 6km radius of Mayon’s crater in north-eastern Albay province in forced evacuations since volcanic activity spiked last week.

Albay’s governor extended the danger zone by a kilometre on Monday and asked thousands of residents to be ready to move any time.

But many opted to flee from the expanded danger zone even before the mandatory evacuation order.

“There’s lava and ashfall already,” Fidela Banzuela, 61, said from a navy truck where she, her daughter, grandchildren and neighbours clambered up after leaving their home in San Fernando village close to Mayon.

“If the volcano explodes, we won’t see anything because it would be so dark.”

Her daughter, Sarah Banzuela, fled with her two children, including a two-year-old who has asthma, which she said could be triggered by volcanic ash that rained down on their village over the weekend.

“There’s ashfall already and, at night, there’s red-hot lava from the volcano that seems to be moving closer to us,” Ms Banzuela, 22, told The Associated Press. She and her mother arrived at a school turned into an evacuation centre teeming with other displaced villagers.

After days of showing signs of renewed restiveness, including a swarm of rockfalls and a bright-orange crater glow visible at night, Mayon began expelling lava on Sunday night, which flowed slowly down two gullies on its south-eastern slope, government volcano experts said.

An ash plume that shot up to 100 metres at dawn on Tuesday drifted south-eastward with the wind toward some villages, said Teresito Bacolcol, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

An AP video showed a boulder being ripped from the side of a dome of lava in Mayon’s crater then plunging and breaking into smaller red-hot pieces as it rolled down and smashed on to other stones on the volcano’s steep slope.

The 2,462m Mayon is a top tourist draw in the Philippines because of its picturesque conical shape but is the most active of 24 known volcanoes in the archipelago.

It last erupted violently in 2018, displacing tens of thousands. In 1814, Mayon’s eruption buried entire villages and left more than 1,000 people dead.

With its peak often shrouded by wisps of passing clouds, Mayon appeared calm on Tuesday, but Mr Bacolcol told AP that lava was continuing to flow slowly down its slopes but could not easily be seen under the bright sun.

The volcano had been raised to alert level three on a five-step warning system last Thursday, meaning a hazardous eruption is possible in weeks or days.

The eruption is the latest natural calamity to test the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who took office in June last year and inherited an economy that was shattered by two years of the coronavirus pandemic, which also deepened poverty and unemployment.

He has deployed some of his Cabinet officials to Albay to help distribute food aid to displaced villagers.