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Taal Volcano Eruption Forces Evacuations in the Philippines
Posted
July 2, 2021
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July 2, 2021
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0:51Now PlayingThousands of people were evacuated from villages around a rumbling volcano near the Philippine capital Friday.
But officials said they faced another dilemma of ensuring emergency shelters will not become epicenters of COVID-19 infections.
The alert was raised to three on a five-level scale after Taal Volcano blasted a dark gray plume into the sky Thursday.
Level three means "magma is near or at the surface, and activity could lead to hazardous eruption in weeks," according to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. Level five means a life-threatening eruption is occurring that could endanger communities.
The agency asked people to stay away from a small island in a scenic lake where Taal sits and is considered a permanent danger zone along with a number of nearby lakeside villages in Batangas province, south of Manila.
An eruption of Taal last year displaced hundreds of thousands of people and briefly closed Manila's international airport.
But the volcano agency's chief said it was too early to know if the volcano's current unrest will lead to a full-blown eruption.
Thursday's preemptive evacuations involved residents in five high-risk villages in the lakeside towns of Laurel and Agoncillo.
More than 14,000 people may have to be moved temporarily away from the volcano, said a spokesperson for the government's disaster-response agency.
Town officials face ensuring emergency shelters, usually school buildings, basketball gyms and even church grounds, would not become coronavirus hotspots.
Displaced villagers were asked to wear masks and sheltered in tents set safely apart, requiring considerably more space than in pre-pandemic times.
In Laurel, Imelda Reyes feared for her family's safety in their home near the volcano and in the crowded grade school-turned-evacuation center where they took shelter Friday.
Reyes, who washes laundry and has four children, wept in desperation as she said she and her husband, a corn farmer, wanted to leave the evacuation camp for a friend's house in northern Nueva Ecija province. But they did not have money for the bus fare.
Most evacuation camps have set up isolation areas in case anyone began showing COVID-19 symptoms.
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