Thousands of people were ordered to evacuate their homes near a Philippine volcano on Saturday after an eruption sent ash and steam hundreds of feet into the sky.
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The Taal volcano, located in a lake south of Manila, erupted at 7:22 a.m., the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said in a statement.
He warned that more eruptions were possible, which could trigger dangerous and rapid volcanic flows of gas, ash and debris, as well as a tsunami.
Residents of five villages have been ordered to leave their homes, regional civil defense spokesman Kelvin John Reyes told AFP. This is the third evacuation in three years.
“It was raining mud,” said Cornelia Pesigan, 25, who took refuge in a school outside the “danger zone”.
“It smelled really bad and I had trouble breathing,” added the mother of two.
The seismological agency “strongly” recommended the evacuation of residents living in vulnerable communities around the lake, and raised the alert level from two to three.
The initial eruption was followed by “almost continuous phreatomagmatic activity” which sent plumes extending 1500 meters into the air.
A phreatomagmatic eruption occurs when molten rock comes into contact with ground or surface water, said Princess Cosalan, a scientist with the agency, likening it to pouring “water on a hot pan” .
Ms Cosalan told AFP that the ash and steam emissions had subsided in the hours following the initial explosion, but added that the institute’s sensors on site continued to detect volcanic tremors and that another eruption was “possible”.
“There is a magmatic intrusion at the level of the main crater which could favor successive eruptions”, warned the agency.
More than 12,000 people live in these villages, according to the latest official data available.
Police have been deployed to prevent people from entering high-risk areas, and authorities have warned airlines of the potential dangers of volcanic ash in the atmosphere.
Taal is one of the country’s most active volcanoes, located on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an area of intense seismic activity.
Access to the volcanic island, which was once home to several thousand people, has been banned since January 2020, when an eruption tossed ash 15 kilometers away and spewed glowing lava onto dozens of homes, killing livestock and displacing tens of thousands of people.