Lava flows slowly from the mouth of the 2,462 meter high volcano in the province of Albay.
Nearly 15,000 people have left their homes around a volcano spewing lava and noxious gases in the northeastern Philippines and could remain displaced for months, authorities warn.
Lava slowly flowed Tuesday from the mouth of the 2,462-meter-high Mayon volcano in Albay province, which was placed on high alert last week after tremors and hundreds of falling rocks.
“Based on our previous experience, this volcanic activity could continue for several months,” Teresito Bacolcol, chief of the state’s bureau of volcanology and seismology, told DZMM radio, adding that residents usually live within 6 km (3.7 mi) of the volcano in Luzon. island should remain in evacuation centers.
Those who evacuated took shelter in schools and community centers, disaster agency data shows. An undetermined number of residents remain within the permanent danger zone below Mayon, an area long off limits to humans but where generations have lived and farmed.
Larry Llenaresas, a community leader in Albay, told DZMM radio that more food and drinking water is needed for the displaced.
Authorities said people living further from the volcano should also be ready for possible evacuation, as police have set up checkpoints to prevent residents from returning.
“We will ensure that evacuees cannot return until they are advised to do so,” police district director Westrimundo Obinque told reporters, according to Reuters news agency.
Mayon is a tourist attraction because of its almost perfect conical shape.
Dorothy Colle, a provincial tourism official, said while the no-go zone was enforced, people still flocked to observation stations to witness lava flows, which appear particularly bright at night.
The eruption is the latest natural disaster to strike the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. who took office last June and inherited an economy devastated by two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, which exacerbated poverty and unemployment.
He has sent some of his cabinet officials to Albay to help distribute food and reassure displaced villagers.
Mayon is the most active of the 24 known volcanoes in the Philippine archipelago. The last eruption was in 2018, displacing tens of thousands of people. In 1814, another eruption buried entire villages and killed more than 1,000 people.
The Philippines is located in the Pacific Ring of Fire, where volcanic activity and earthquakes are common.