The government raised the alert level around the country's most active volcano Sunday, warning of a possible hazardous eruption within days and extending a “no-go zone” up to 10 km (6 miles). Mayon Volcano, known for its near-perfect cone shape in the coconut-growing central Bicol region, has been spewing ash and burning mud and rocks since Monday, chief vulcanologist Renato Solidum said. Officials from the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said they raised the alert level from 3 to 4 after noting rumbling sounds in nearby Sto. Domingo town. They said this is a sign that a major eruption is possible within days. “We raised the alert level to 4 ... meaning an eruption is within days,” Solidum said after aerial inspection and other observations of the volcano showed increased activity in the past 24 hours. Level 4 indicates an eruption is imminent and the maximum alert level of 5 means an eruption is underway, he said. Solidum said over 450 volcanic tremors were monitored in the past 12 hours and rumbling sounds had been heard at the base of the volcano. More than 40,000 people – about 85 percent of the population in the area – have already been moved to temporary shelters, where food and water stations have been set up. About 50,000 masks were distributed Sunday to displaced people. Joey Salceda, governor of Albay province where Mayon is located, said he had ordered the deployment of more troops around the expanded no-go zone to forcibly evacuate more people and to stop others who wanted to return to their homes and farms. “We're preparing to evacuate more people before the actual big eruption,” Salceda told reporters. The Philippines lies on the “Ring of Fire,” a belt of volcanoes circling the Pacific Ocean that is also prone to earthquakes. Mayon is the most active of 22 volcanoes in the country, having erupted more than 50 times in the past four centuries. The most destructive eruption was in February 1841, when lava flows buried the town of Gagsawa and killed 1,200 people. Phivolcs Bicol-based monitoring head Julio Sabit said Phivolcs has monitored at least 463 quakes from 5 A.M. to 2 P.M. Sunday. He said the danger zone, which stands at a maximum of 8 kilometers around the volcano, might be expanded to 10 kms. He also said the lava flow has now reached about 4.5 kilometers down the slope from the crater along Bonga-Buyuan Gully. At the same time, sulfur dioxide emissions increased to 7,024 from 2,034 tons per day, Sabit said. Local civil defense head Raffy Alejandro said the military and police have evacuated more than 8,000 of the 9,000 families living within the eight-kilometer danger zone set around Mayon. Earlier Sunday morning prior to the raising of Alert Level 4, Sabit said authorities were expecting the volcano to erupt on New Year's Day or immediately after that. A few hours later, Phivolcs officials revised their assessment, saying that the eruption could come sooner or even before New Year's Day. Sabit said hot molten rocks have started making their way to the volcano's crater, which “means fresh magma is climbing up.” Despite this, Sabit said Mayon Volcano's activity was not yet as intense as that of Mount Pinatubo in Central Luzon when the latter erupted in 1991. When Pinatubo erupted, its sulfur dioxide emission reached more than 10,000 tons per day, he said. He warned the increasing number of tourists to watch the volcano from a safe distance since a sudden major eruption could catch them flat-footed, putting their lives at risk.
