Mayon remains under Alert Level 2

MANILA, Philippines — State volcanologists see no reason to increase Mayon’s alert level from two to three even as the volcano acted up again and spewed ash on Sunday afternoon.

“We will not change the alert level for now. There is no indication that we need to increase the alert level from two to three,” Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) director Teresito Bacolcol said yesterday.

Phivolcs clarified that the phreatic eruption only lasted 169 seconds and not four minutes and nine seconds as earlier reported.

“The good analogy for that is, it’s like when you put water in boiling oil and steaming occurs. The volcanic activity was not accompanied by magma flows,” Bacolcol said, referring to Mayon’s phreatic eruption on Sunday.

He said that in the past four days, state volcanologists did not record volcanic earthquakes around Mayon.

“This means there was no magma that went up. The phreatic eruption was limited to the summit. You have hot material that had contact with water and as a result, there was steaming and volcanic ash. There was a sudden burst. It was not as violent as a magmatic eruption, but can still send ash out,” Bacolcol said.

Phivolcs said it has not received reports of ash fall from any barangay surrounding the volcano.

Bacolcol said Alert Level 2 remains in effect over Mayon even as no volcanic earthquake aided the high sulfur dioxide emission.

“The sulfur dioxide reading was still high. It is not only earthquakes that we consider as parameters. We also check if there is ground inflation or deflation and if the gas being emitted is high,” he said

As of yesterday, Phivolcs recorded 621 tons of sulfur dioxide with moderate emission drifting northwest.