Government bars return of natives to volcano island
TAGAYTAY, Philippines — Government authorities will no longer allow villagers to return to a craterstudded island where an erupting volcano lies, warning that living there would be “like having a gun pointed at you.”
Taal volcano has simmered with smaller ash ejections in recent days after erupting on Jan. 12 with a huge plume of steam and ash that drifted northward and reached Manila, the capital, about 40 miles away. While the volcano remains dangerous, with large numbers of local villagers encamped in emergency shelters, officials have begun discussing posteruption recovery.
Interior Secretary Eduardo Ano said officials in Batangas province, where the volcano is located, have been asked to look for a safer housing area for about 6,000 families that used to live in four villages and worked mostly as tourist guides, farmers and fish pen operators on Volcano Island. The new housing site should be at least 10 miles away from the restive volcano to be safe, he said.
“They lived on the volcano itself with 47 craters. That’s really dangerous. It’s like having a gun pointed at you,” Renato Solidum, the head of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, told the Associated Press.
The island has long been declared by the government as a national park that’s offlimits to permanent villages. The government’s volcanomonitoring agency has separately declared the island a permanent danger zone, but impoverished villagers have lived and worked there for decades.
“We have to enforce these regulations once and for all because their lives are at stake,” Ano said Sunday, adding that closely regulated tourism work could eventually be allowed on the island without letting residents live there permanently.
President Rodrigo Duterte has approved a recommendation for the island to be turned into a “no man’s land,” but he has yet to issue formal guidelines. After an initial visit last week, Duterte plans to return to hardhit Batangas province on Monday to check conditions of displaced villagers, Ano said.
Although it’s one of the world’s smallest volcanoes, the 1,020foothigh Taal is the second mostactive of 24 restive Philippine volcanoes. The volcanology agency has placed Taal and outlying cities and towns at alert level 4, the secondhighest warning, indicating a more dangerous explosive eruption is possible within hours or days.