Despite high risks, villagers make volcano their home
TALISAY,PHILIPPINES:IT’S the secondmost active volcano in the Philippines, a designated permanent danger zone long declared offlimits to human settlements. Yet to more than 5,000 people, the Taal volcano is still home.
A lush island dotted with dozens of craters in the middle of a lake, the volcano roared into action on Sunday with an eruption that shot rocks, ash and steam miles into the sky just hours after the inhabitants of its four villages fled on boats. A man who defied warnings to sneak back to the island to check on his pigs, says there is complete devastation.
“Almost everything was destroyed,” Christian Morales told AP, adding that he was only able to get his bearings after seeing the cross of a mud-encrusted Catholic church where he used to hear Mass.
So far no one has been reported killed in the eruption, but the disaster is spotlighting the longstanding dilemma of how the government can move settlements away from danger zones threatened by volcanoes, landslides, floods and typhoons.
Sometimes, as is the case with Taal, the settlements are in violation of laws that have not been enforced. “It’s an accident waiting to happen,” Renato Solidum, head of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, said of the villages on the island.
He said his agency has repeatedly warned against living on the island, which it has declared a permanent danger zones where people are forbidden from setting up homes.