Alarm is growing over the volcanic eruption on the southeast coast of Luzon. The lava falls slowly but steadily: it does not pose an immediate threat, but the toxic fumes and falling rocks endanger the residents. The Legazpi Diocese is mobilizing to help.
Manila () – In the Philippines, the eruptive activity of the Mayon volcano is intensifying and the evacuated population will have to prepare for a long stay in shelters, perhaps even several months, according to experts. The volcano, located on the southeast coast of the island of Luzon, in the province of Albay, near the city of Legazpi, is known for its often intense activity.
The lava that has been slowly but steadily flowing down the 2,462-meter-high cone since last week does not pose an immediate threat, but the toxic fumes and falling rocks are endangering residents. So far, 14,000 people have been evacuated within a six kilometer radius around the mountain and are staying in schools and emergency centers. The authorities have already arranged for a larger area to be evacuated if the development of the situation so requires. At the same time, however, a large number of onlookers crowd the observation centers despite the fact that the authorities prohibited it.
Although alert and evacuation services are already well established in this country, which is frequently affected by the forces of nature and which has long learned to anticipate them as much as possible to avoid harm, above all to people, they could The limited resources available will not be sufficient to guarantee food, drinking water and other basic necessities.
For this reason, the diocese of Legazpi, which has already activated its own teams trained for the emergency, launched a campaign to raise funds and aid through its Social Action Center with the collaboration of local parishes.
Mayon Volcano is one of the 24 active volcanoes in the Philippines. In the last four centuries it has registered around 50 large eruptions, the most destructive in 1814, which caused 1,200 deaths. The perfect cone constitutes the main tourist attraction in the area, predominantly agricultural, but its instability continues to make the subsistence of the inhabitants of the lower slopes precarious and sometimes, as in this case, even threatens an area that includes more distant inhabited nuclei with emissions of ash and toxic gases.
The most devastating and long-lasting eruption in the Philippine archipelago, the most serious in the world in the last century, was that of Pinatubo, just north of Manila, near the city of Angeles, on July 15, 1991. The The final eruption of the volcanic dome, anticipated for months by the telluric phenomena and the emission of huge columns of steam and ash, raised a cloud 40 kilometers high, which in the following hours deposited a blanket of ash up to 200 meters high on the an area of thousands of square kilometers, which, together with the mass of ash and mud that descended from the slopes under torrential rains, solidified, covering fields and villages. The whole face of the region changed and if the evacuation displaced 250,000 inhabitants, some of whom never returned, at least two million Filipinos suffered the consequences of the event. The repercussions on the global climate were significant for years. The death toll reached 847, mostly buried by the collapse of roofs that had given way under the weight of ash mixed with water.
