MANILA, Oct 30 — One of the Philippines’ most active volcanoes fired a dark column of ash thousands of metres into the sky today in a “moderately explosive eruption” that lasted nearly six minutes, the state seismology office said.
There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage in towns and cities surrounding Mount Mayon, but the country’s volcano institute raised the alert level from 2 to 3 on its 0-5 scale and called for evacuations within six kilometres (3.7 miles) of the crater.
The 3,000-metre (nearly 10,000 feet) ash column gradually drifted southwest onto nearby population centres, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said in a bulletin.
“Mayon is in a new phase of magmatic eruption, with increased chances of lava flows and hazardous PDCs (pyroclastic density currents)... affecting the upper to middle slopes of the volcano in the immediate days to weeks,” it said.
