Mount Mayon Volcano: Philippines Volcano Could Erupt Any Time

by Scott Wu | December 22, 2009 at 12:39 pm

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Mount Mayon volcano in Philippines could have explosive eruption any time now, said scientists. Mount Mayon has been put on high alert, at level 4 on a 5-point scale. Volcanic earthquakes decreased to 1,266 in the last 24 hours, down from about 2,000 the day before, but intensity has increased. Most residents around Mount Mayon have been evacuated from the evacuation zone. Officials are still searching for some 500 people who are still thought to be in the area.

"We're conducting house-to-house surveying to make sure people will go to the evacuation centres. There is some resistance due to the Christmas season," he told Al Jazeera.

An eruption in Mayon volcano can last for months. "In 2006, it emitted ash and oozed lava for two months," said Renato Solidum, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

In 2006, after residents returned home, a typhoon came and washed the volcanic debris down the slopes, killing approximately 1,000 people.

The authorities said they were striving to complete the evacuation of the danger zone within a five-mile radius of Mayon, and that about 45,000 residents of the zone were now in evacuation centers.

Why do people live around the dangerous volcano which has had 49 eruptions in the past 400 years? The volcano provide fertile soil, and thus provide farmers great income from crops and livestock.

officials said the operation had been difficult, because of the reluctance of the residents to leave the fertile plains around the mountain, where their crops and livestock thrive, earning them a living that plenty of other Filipino farmers would envy.