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Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Ash clouds send Mayonfolk to panic


21 July 2006

By Ephraim Aguilar
PDI Southern Luzon Bureau

STO. DOMINGO, ALBAY—MUSHROOM-shaped ash clouds which winds sent northeast toward this town at about 8 a.m. yesterday caused residents of the villages of Lidong and San Isidro here to panic and led to the voluntary evacuation of around 100 residents.

Romeo Cabria, Municipal Disaster Coordinating Council action officer, said the residents were first taken to the town’s gymnasium but the local government was planning to send them back home as the alert level had not been raised from 3.

Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) senior science research specialist Eduardo Laguerta said what happened was a “collapse-type” of pyroclastic flow which caused the ash clouds.

He said lava “chunks” that had cooled and solidified earlier had broken off after more lava flowed from Mayon’s crater. This generated the ash clouds without there necessarily having been an explosion.

“It was not yet the major blast. The ash clouds did not come from the crater but from the lava fragments that collapsed downslope,” Laguerta said.

No evacuation yet

Jukes Nuñez of the Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council plans and operations division said no evacuation was ordered since the alert level remained at 3 of the 5-level warning system.

He said, however, that classes were suspended in Lidong and San Isidro because of the ashfall.
The 2,474-meter Mt. Mayon, meanwhile, continued to spew lava.

Tremor episodes increased to 404 in the past 24 hours from 250, which Phivolcs said could be associated with increasing lava extrusion, rockfalls and detaching lava fragments occurring within the 6-km permanent danger zone.

Sulfur dioxide emissions, which Laguerta said was one of the indicators of magma coming to the surface, were relatively higher yesterday than the normal level of 1,863 tons per day.

Farmer Eladio Echaluce, 85, said he was working in his field on the volcano’s southeastern slope when he heard a shout and saw someone pointing to a cloud of ash, The Associated Press reported.

“When I saw the cloud, I got scared and came down,” he said.
Another farmer, Loreto Aydaya, also rushed down carrying a sack of vegetables and leading his two water buffalo.

“I was scared because I was about a kilometer away,” he said.

Schoolteacher Jenny Perez said parents rushed to the Matanag Elementary School to get their children.

“I could not do anything, so I just dismissed my class,” she said.

Other residents packed their bags and kitchen utensils and waited on the roadside or inside their homes for village officials’ signal to evacuate. With an AP report

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