3 explosions rock Mt. Bulusan

LEGAZPI CITY – Bulusan volcano spewed ash for the third time on Monday night, which followed an explosion earlier in the day.

The mountain also puffed ash Sunday at about 5:45 a.m., which reached some four kilometers from the crater summit, blanketing Barangays Monbon, Tinampo, Cogon, Gulang-Gulang, Omagon and Bolos, all in Irosin town, and Barangays Buraburan and Bacolod in nearby Juban town, with 1.5 millimeters of ash fall.

The third ash explosion, which lasted about 20 minutes, was comparatively smaller in magnitude than the explosion Sunday.

Due to thick clouds covering the volcano’s summit, the height and direction of the phreatic explosion was not observed.

Bella Tuvianosa, head of the monitoring team of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) based in Barangay Cabid-an in Sorsogon City, said the seismic network recorded only one high frequency volcanic quake during the past 24 hours.

Tuvianosa said the correlation spectrometer (COSPEC) that measures the amount of sulfur gas emission from the 2,741 feet volcano placed the amount of sulfur dioxide emission at 640 tons per day, which is still way above the 500 tons per day normal output.

"Voluminous white steam rising to about 100 meters from the summit crater were observed during cloud breaks drifting towards the south-west," the Phivolcs report said.

Bulusan started to become restive on March 21, 2006, prompting government volcanologists to raise the alert level to 1. The volcano spewed ash again in April and another two in May last year.

Three explosions rocked the volcano in June 2006, forcing Phivolcs to raise the alert level to 2. After that the volcano started to remain silent.

But the volcano spewed ash in October last year and another before the year ended, Phivolcs said. Two minor ash explosions were also recorded January this year.