Philippines’ Kanlaon volcano erupts, shooting ash 2.5 miles into the sky and prompting mass evacuation

Manila — A volcano briefly erupted in the central Philippines on Monday, sending a huge ash column high into the sky as the government ordered the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from surrounding villages. Rising more than 8,000 feet above sea level on the central island of Negros, Kanlaon is one of 24 active volcanoes in the Philippines.

A nearly four-minute eruption Monday afternoon sending a 2.5-mile ash column above the crater and a deadly spurt of hot ash, gases and fragmented volcanic rock about 2 miles down the mountain’s southeast flank, officials told a news conference. The nation’s volcano alert level was raised, indicating more explosive eruptions could still follow.

There were no reported casualties from Monday’s eruption, but volcanic ash fell across a wide area, including in Antique province, some 120 miles across the sea to the west of the volcano. The ash cloud obscured visibility and created a potential health risk, officials warned.

“Getting hit by these pyroclastic density currents is like being run over by a high-speed vehicle,” said Maria Antonia Bornas, volcano monitoring chief of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

“If the ash enters your lungs it would cause asphyxiation,” she said, urging local officials to evacuate 15 villages within six kilometres of the crater.

She said ash from the eruption rained down on several nearby towns and cities around the volcano and warned heavy rain could dislodge the fresh volcanic sediment from the latest eruption, which could bury communities below.

About half of a dozen domestic flights and one bound for Singapore were canceled Monday and Tuesday due to the eruption, according to the Philippine Civil Aviation Authority.

“Evacuations are ongoing” in four upland villages of La Castellana town, on the volcano’s southwest slope, municipal police officer Staff Sergeant Ronel Arevalo told AFP, adding he did not have the total number of residents to be evacuated. The Philippine government said in a notice posted on its official information agency website that an “urgent evacuation operation is underway, affecting approximately 87,000 residents” in the area around the volcano.

La Castellana resident Dianne Paula Abendan, 24, used her mobile phone to take a video clip of a giant cauliflower-shaped grey mass of smoke billowing above the crater.

“These past few days we’ve seen black smoke coming out of (the) volcano. We were expecting that it would erupt anytime this week,” she told AFP by phone.

Abendan said people rushed home to await evacuation orders, but added that the volcanic activity appeared to ease slightly about an hour later.

Authorities said flights to and from the Bacolod-Silay international airport, nearest the volcano, remained normal, but carriers were warned from flying below 10,000 feet near the volcano.

“Flight operators are advised to avoid flying close to the volcano due to possible hazards of sudden steam-driven or phreatic eruptions and precursory magmatic activity,” said an official bulletin from the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines.

In September, hundreds of nearby residents were evacuated after the volcano spurted thousands of tons of harmful gases in a single day. The seismology office said Kanlaon has erupted more than 40 times since 1866.

In 1996, three hikers were killed due to ash ejection from the volcano.