Residents Flee Village As Boulders Rumble Down Bulusan

Associated Press, Inquirer
Updated 06:02pm (Mla time) 06/25/2006

JUBAN, Camarines Sur--(UPDATE) About 100 residents fled from a Philippine farming village after hearing boulders and rocks rumbling down restive Mount Bulusan in Sorsogon province amid heavy rains from a tropical storm, an official said Sunday.

Army and government trucks helped the residents flee from barangay (village) Cogon below Bulusan. No one was injured and no houses were damaged by the mudflow and boulders - some as big as a car - that tumbled down the volcano late Saturday, said Mayor Lilia Gonzales of Irosin town.

The boulders and rocks - ejected during Bulusan's previous ash expulsions - were washed down the volcano by the heavy rains, Gonzales said.

"The villagers heard the rocks cascading down Bulusan and they ran for their lives thinking they would be crushed," Gonzales told The Associated Press by telephone.

The boulders snapped a water pipe that ran across the gully, cutting off the water supply to households in the village, the Inquirer's Southern Luzon Bureau reported.

The 100 villagers were brought to a school away from the volcano, joining 400 other residents who were evacuated days earlier following Bulusan's intermittent blasts of ash and rocky debris, Gonzales said.

Nearly 2,000 people have been evacuated to school buildings in Irosin and the nearby towns of Casiguran and Juban due to Bulusan's ash expulsions and the danger of volcanic mudflows, according to the government's National Disaster Coordinating Center.

Romeo Cielo, assistant district engineer of the Sorsogon Second District Engineering Office, expressed alarm that they did not have enough information on what kind of volcanic debris to expect from Bulusan.

The 1,560-meter (5,149-foot) volcano, located in Sorsogon province about 390 kilometers southeast of Manila, has belched ash nine times since coming back to life in March. Its last major eruption was in 1994, causing no casualties.

Sorsogon is among a cluster of eastern provinces experiencing heavy rains due to a tropical storm affecting the central Philippines, government forecasters said.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology warned villagers to stay away from a permanent danger zone around Bulusan. Although the volcano was quiet Sunday, the stormy weather could trigger life-threatening volcanic mudflows, it said in a statement.

Gonzales said she has warned residents in villages under threat of mudflows or rock slides to evacuate to temporary shelters because of the storm and not wait for an imminent danger before moving away.

"I told them that in an ash explosion they can just cover their face with towels but in a sudden mudflow, they'll be the ones to be covered alive," she said.

Before leaving Sunday for Europe, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo held an emergency meeting with officials monitoring Bulusan villages. She ordered two air force C-130 cargo aircraft and helicopters, along with a medical team, to stand by in case of possible evacuation.

Arroyo said a major eruption was unlikely in the next few days.

Bulusan is one of 22 active volcanos in the Philippines, which lies on the Pacific Ocean's "Ring of Fire," where volcanic activity and earthquakes are common.