Manila: Philippine authorities have ordered the mandatory evacuation of 12,000 families due to the impending eruption of a powerful volcano in southern Luzon’s Bicol region, sources said.
The move came as local government officials placed two cities and six towns under a state of calamity.
“A total of 12,000 people, living in a six-kilometre radius around Mayon Volcano, long designated as a permanent danger zone in Albay Province, were included in the 24-hour mandatory evacuation that local government officials have started to implement on Tuesday,” Albay Governor Jose Salceda told Gulf News in a phone interview.
“Evacuation centres were also established in Albay Province’s Legazpi City and Santo Domingo towns for the mandatory evacuation. The families in Mayon’s danger zone were no longer allowed to evacuate voluntarily,” Salceda said.
By Monday night, some 30 families or 120 people from Albay’s Guinobatan town had already been evacuated, Salceda added.
Vehicles of the Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (MDRRMC), the regional office of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), brought the vulnerable residents out of Guinobatan to a designated evacuation centre, said undersecretary Alexander Pama, head of the NDRRMC.
Placed under a state of calamity were the cities of Legaspi and Tabaco, and the towns of Camalig, Daraga, Guinobatan, Ligao, Malilipot, and Sto. Domingo, Salceda said.
Authorities also suspended classes in areas at lesser risk, where schools were transformed into evacuation centres, in preparation for the eruption of Mayon Volcano, Salceda added.
Concerned local government officials were called to an emergency meeting on Tuesday for them to arrive at strategies in response to Mayon Volcano’s impending eruption, said Salceda.
“On Monday, alert level three was raised around Mayon Volcano because of its high level of unrest. Its magma started to push up to the crater,” Renato Solidum, head of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) also told Gulf News.
“It is expected to erupt within weeks. By that time, alert level five will be raised,” Solidum explained.
Albay, a pastoral and coastal province 330 kilometres southeast of Manila is a popular tourist spot for its scenic view of the 2,460-metre high perfect cone of Mayon Volcano.
Mayon is however also known for its dangerous, deadly, and historic eruptions.
Four foreign tourists and a resident tour guide were killed when it erupted in May 2013.
In December 2006, some 1,000 people were killed in a mudslide when a typhoon brought down Mayon’s debris from its rocky flanks following an explosion in August 2006.
More than 1,200 people were killed when Cagsawa town was buried by Mayon’s lava flows in 1814.
