Eruption of the Mayon Volcano in Legazpi
Monday May 13, 2013
Bulusan Volcano Natural Park, Sorsogon, Philippines

It took an effort to load up my bike and cycle away from the comforts of the hostel in Legazpi. I’d stayed there when I first arrived in the Philippines and I returned there after my trip to Catanduanes. I had some errands to run and some organzing to do. Then I resisted leaving and I settled in for some relaxing days going through the books on their bookshelf and then through some books on my Kindle. I had quite a nice routine going – coffee out on the verandah in the morning, then fruit and bread and oatmeal for breakfast in the hostel kitchen, a nice lunch of Filipino dishes at the Jamico family eatery, and then a spaghetti dinner with canned corn beef for dinner. I’d mix things up in the afternoon with a cold beer (chilled in the freezer), spicy nuts or barbecue nuts from the local grocery store, and a can or two of mango juice. The occasional backpacker would pass through and I’d chat with them about their travels. Then there were the two or three days of excitement when the volcano erupted. It wasn’t a true eruption, if you think of an eruption in terms of lava and pyrocastic flows and all that. This was what they call a phreatic eruption, essentially a steam eruption. It is not something that can be predicted with the usual methods, so it came as a complete surprise. Twenty-seven hikers were on the mountain when the eruption occurred. Five of them were killed by falling rocks and seven were injured. The eruption occurred at the worst possible time – about 8 in the morning. Hikers generally get up very early in the morning and begin to make their way to the edge of the crater. They would have been either at the edge of the crater on their way there when the eruption occurrred. Had it taken place at a different time, chances are that there would have been fewer casualties.

It took a fair amount of time for accurate details to emerge. Initial reports had one Filipino guide killed and one foreign climber injured. That changed hour by hour and day by day until the final figure of 5 dead and 7 injured was being widely reported. The nationallities of those who died changed as well, but the most consistent reports said that three were German, one was Spanish, and one was a Filipino guide.

When it first happened, I had a mental image of rocks flying through the air and then crashing to earth and hitting the climbers. I got this image because the first report I received said that the Filipino guide was hit in the head with a flying rock. Later, I learned what really happened, and this made a lot more sense. The climbers were killed not by rocks falling from the sky but by large boulders rolling down the volcano’s extremely steep slopes.

The reports I read and heard were quite vague about where the climbers were located when the boulders hit them. However, it appears that these climbers were all in one group and they happened to be in a large gorge – the worst possible place to be as the boulders were channeled straight down this gorge. I don’t know if this gorge was a standard climbing route or if this group happened to be there by chance or for some special reason.

One of the Filipino guides that was with the group supplied almost all of the first-hand accounts that appeared in the news reports. According to his statements, the boulders were very large – the size of living-rooms and cars – and they struck the group with no warning. He managed to hide behind something, but the foreigners were caught out in the open and were struck by the boulders. I’m not sure what happened next. I assume he checked to see if the foreign climbers were dead or alive, but he doesn’t say. He actually was reported as saying something a bit strange – that he was injured himself and was in no condition to help anyone and he ran down the mountain to get help. I can’t remember the exact wording, but it gave the unfortunate impression that he simply took off. That’s pretty unlikely, but not impossible. I don’t think the guides are highly trained. They simply know the route up the mountain and can speak English well enough to communicate with their clients. This guide was quoted as cursing the mountain and saying that he will never climb it again. All-in-all, he didn’t come across as a very professional guide. He certainly wasn’t worried about the impression his words made.

Being as close as I was to an event like this provided a lot of food for thought. I was sitting on the roof of the hostel and writing in my journal at 8 a.m. when the eruption occurred, yet I wasn’t even aware of it until ten or twenty minutes later. I certainly didn’t hear anything, and I didn’t happen to look in the volcano’s direction, so I didn’t see the steam cloud rising into the air. By the time the front desk clerk at the hostel told me about it, some clouds had moved over the volcano and the situation was a bit unclear. There was a tall pillar of cloud rising above the volcano, but it looked like just a standard cloud formation to me. The only evidence that an eruption occurred was a dark edge to this cloud – as if some darker material than natural cloud was rising up underneath.

For a long time, I doubted that an eruption had even occurred. Even the early reports of the death of a Filipino guide struck me as perhaps untrue. People just didn’t seem upset enough by the news. I heard this story first from another climbing guide – a young guy that came by the hostel quite a few times to talk to people about climbing the volcano. He was the source of the report that this guide was hit in the head with a rock. I doubted the truth of his story because he seemed so carefree about it. He laughed and smiled as he told the story. I assumed that since he was part of the climbing industry and almost certainly knew this other guide personally that he would be a bit more somber and serious. I got the same impression when I happened to drop by the offices of a local tour company, one that organizes volcano climbs. The two women in that office also seemed largely unaffected by the death of the guide. They knew this guide by name and the company that he worked for, but they seemed quite unaffected by it all.

Politicians, of course, could not appear unaffected and the governor of Albay province was making all kinds of statements about the danger of the volcano and how he might ban all climbing. There were all kinds of strange statements floating around. One politician commented that it was the danger and the risk that attracted climbers, so there was nothing that can be done about it. The politicians seemed largely concerned with the idea of blame, and they went so far as to try to blame the climbers and guides themselves, saying that they were on the volcano without permission. Their statements gave the impression that climbing the volcano was not allowed and there was danger, and these climbers brought it on themselves.

Being on the ground in Legazpi, I could see how nonsensical their statements were – talking about blame and permission and danger zones and thrill-seekers. For one thing, nobody climbs that volcano for the risk and challenge. It’s not that kind of climb. Anyone who is reasonably fit can do it. It’s not a climb so much as a hike. People who climb it aren’t professional mountain climbers but tourists looking for something to do while in the Legazpi area. Almost everone who stayed at the hostel either climbed the volcano or looked into climbing it while they were there. Those who didn’t climb it were largely turned off by the cost. Local guides charged a great deal to lead groups up the volcano, and those that were travelling on extended trips decided it wasn’t worth it. One group of young guys staying at the hostel did climb the volcano, but they did it on their own without the help of any guides. The point is that these were not climbers looking for a technical challenge but ordinary people just on a holiday interested in seeing a volcano up close and hopefully getting a nice view of the countryside. Had there been signs of an impending eruption, there would have been an official announcement from the monitoring agency PhilVocs, and no one would have been allowed to climb the volcano. The main point about these steam eruptions is that they can’t be predicted. There are no signs that one is going to occur.

The politicians kept referring to the “danger zone” and pointing out that the climbers were inside this zone. They were implying that these climbers had gone into a restricted area and therefore it was their own fault. All nonsense, of course, because the danger zone is not a restricted area. With signs of an impending eruption, then a danger zone is established and no one would be allowed into that zone. Since there were no such signs, climbing of the volcano was allowed. In fact, there were 27 people on the volcano that day.

For several days after this event, a great deal of steam came pouring out of the crater of the volcano. Previously, there had been no steam at all. That steam cloud rising from the crater certainly gave the volcano a more menacing aspect.

Tags: Bulusan Volcano Natural Park, Legazpi to Matnog, Mayon Volcano, Philippines Bike Trip 2013