Ash Plume Billows From Mayon Volcano Over Albay Town as Philippines Raises Alert Level

A grey plume of ash and steam billowed from the summit of Mayon Volcano, towering over a busy town street, after a moderately explosive eruption prompted the Philippines to raise the volcano’s alert level on Friday, October 30.

Footage filmed from a roadside, with motorbikes, cars and traffic cones in the foreground, shows the volcano’s cone rising above rooftops under a clear blue sky before the camera zooms in on the clouds of ash pouring down its upper slopes. “Mayon Volcano atm,” the filmer wrote when sharing the video shortly after midday local time.

The eruption began at 11:53 a.m. and lasted nearly six minutes, sending a column of ash about 3 kilometers above the crater that drifted west-southwest, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said. The agency raised the alert from Level 2 to Level 3 on its five-level scale, saying Mayon had entered a new phase of magmatic eruption, with increased chances of lava flows and pyroclastic density currents in the coming days to weeks.

Phivolcs recommended evacuating residents within the 6-kilometer Permanent Danger Zone and warned of ashfall in Daraga, Camalig, Guinobatan and nearby towns. Classes were suspended and families evacuated, local media reported. Mayon had been kept at Alert Level 3 for about seven months earlier this year before being lowered on August 5.