Mayon volcano monitoring station’s solar panel batteries stolen

LEGAZPI, Philippines — Thieves broke into the monitoring station of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) in Barangay Lidong in Tabaco, Albay and took the accessories of its power supply.

A maintenance crew discovered the incident on Sunday, Mayon’s resident volcanologist Ed Laguerta said yesterday.

“We cannot receive critical data from that part of our monitoring station… Our Mayon daily monitoring updates are not complete,” Laguerta said.

He said 12-volts 100 Ah batteries, a solar panel and two solar charge controllers worth around P90,000 were stolen.

“They were after the power supply because they cannot use the monitoring instruments and nobody buys them,” Laguerta said.

Laguerta said he reported the incident to Cedric Daep, operations officer of the Albay Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, and Clyde Yucot of the Office of Civil Defense in Bicol.

Mayon’s monitoring station is an integrated system of instruments and benchmarks distributed around the volcano to collect data to forecast volcanic behavior and issue warnings and information to reduce loss of life and property. 

It records real-time data sent to the Mayon Volcano Observatory in Ligñon Hill in this city. 

Meanwhile, Mayon’s seismic monitoring network did not detect any volcanic earthquake in the past 24 hours. 

Weak emission of white steam-laden plumes that drifted west-southwest was also observed. 

Mayon remains under Alert Level 1 due to its abnormal condition.