the mayon evacuation

It looks like the famed "perfect cone" Mayon Volcano in the Philippines is about to have a major eruption again, threatening many surrounding villages. The government has ordered the evacuation of up to 50,000 people who live within an 8-km radius of the volcano.

An excerpt from the Inq7 article, found here:

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LEGAZPI CITY -- Bundled in Army trucks, jeepneys and private cars and hugging their dearest possessions, thousands of villagers fled their homes yesterday after one of the Philippines’ deadliest volcanoes blasted out clouds of ash, indicating a major eruption was imminent.

The government ordered the forced evacuation of anywhere from 35,000 to 50,000 villagers after declaring an 8-km zone on the southeast sector of Mount Mayon a “no man’s land.”

Waiting for a truck on a roadside in Barangay Mabinit, one of the most threatened villages, an elderly woman nervously clutched her rosary beads and made the sign of the cross.

Nearby, a half-naked man carried bundles of newly cut firewood on his shoulder. Other men had toddlers in their arms.

“It could just be hours or a matter of two days before a major eruption will occur,” resident volcanologist Eduardo Laguerta told an emergency meeting of the Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council.

Whole families clutching sleeping mats, pillows, frying pans, radios, plastic food and water containers and sackfuls of clothes joined the massive flight.

Behind them, mushroom-shaped ash clouds towered overhead.

Megaphone in hand, Mayor Noel Rosal roamed Mabinit, appealing to residents to leave.

One of the country’s 22 active volcanoes, Mayon has had a violent history of 47 eruptions since 1616. Its worst eruption buried Cagsawa town and killed 1,200 people in 1814. A 1993 eruption killed 77 farmers.

‘Hazardous and explosive’

Laguerta gave the grim forecast after Mayon belched ash columns towering from 300 to 800 meters on the 23rd day of its restiveness. More ash ejections were expected during the day.

This prompted the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) to raise the alert one notch higher to level 4, which meant that a “hazardous, explosive eruption” was imminent....

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