[News] Mayon: The people constantly fleeing a Philippine volcano

[EG l Kemo]

Mayon volcano glows a fiery red at night as lava cascades from its crater
In another shelter, Benjamin Nasol, a motor taxi driver, worries about the small pig farm he left behind. Every night he returns to his home in Camalig town for a few hours to ensure that his animals are fed and safe from thieves.

"We are used to it," the 53-year-old tells the BBC. He says the sight of molten rocks cascading from Mayon's crater does not scare him one bit as it is his third time in a volcano shelter.

"Even if you are weary or exhausted, you need to do your obligations in the village, then you come back to your family here in the evacuation centre," he says.

State scientists flagged increased activity on Mayon in early June, after they observed more frequent earthquakes and rockfalls from the crater. It is now under the third-highest alert based on a five-tier scale that measures the probability of an explosive eruption.

Technically, Mayon is erupting, albeit at a slow pace.

From a hilltop observatory, volcanologist Paul Alanis looks for visual cues that could upgrade the alert level. Those alerts then determine how many people will need to be evacuated. When Level 3 was declared on 8 June, at least 13,000 people were immediately moved to shelters. Several thousands more were evacuated in the succeeding days.

For what's invisible to the naked eye, Mr Alanis uses a seismometer to measure movements underground.

The most telling sign that Mayon was acting up was the swelling of a dome on its crater that was left by its last lava eruption in 2018, Mr Alanis says. That so-called lava dome appeared to be growing as early as April this year.

https://www.bbc.com/