By PABLO A. TARIMAN
AFTER months of festive tribute to Daragang Magayon in theater, music and dance mounted by the provincial government, the country’s celebrated volcano put up its own culminating true-to-life performance with an eruption that caught everyone by surprise Tuesday.
The volcanologists referred to the eruption as “phreatic” described as steam-driven explosions that occur when water beneath the ground or on the surface is heated by magma, lava, hot rocks, or new volcanic deposits.
According to a source, the intense heat of such material — as high as 1,170° C for basaltic lava — may cause water to boil and flash to steam, thereby generating an explosion of steam, water and ash.
The phreatic eruption, last seen in 2010, claimed the life of five German nationals and a Filipino guide.
It was bewildering listening to survivors recounting seeing boulders as big as an entire house coming their way.
Local and foreign tourists fall in love with Mayon and the tragic reminder of its fury, the Cagsawa Church ruins, and many actually risk life and limb just to scale its heights and celebrate the important milestones in their lives.
No less than around the volcano crater itself!
Many years back, a Swiss mountaineer named Jan Trangott observed his 46th birthday right on the mouth of Mayon Volcano. “This is one birthday I will never forget,” Jan said as he clinked glasses with his four companions. He climbed on an early morning and reached the peak as the early morning sun broke through the clouds.
In 1963, former Education Secretary Alejandro Roces scaled Mayon and in the 70s, a mountain guide named Ricardo Dy had the enviable record of climbing Mayon more than 23 times.
“Except for the absence of snow, Mayon measures up well to anything Fujiyama, Annapurna, the Alps, the Himalayas and other formidable mountains can offer and for so much less,” attested a Japanese mountain climber in the 1970s.
But how big can those stones and boulders get during such eruption?
In the 1978 Mayon eruption, I joined a group of Manila-based media men who got to the nearest barrio where one could get a vantage (but dangerous) view of the lava flow. The group consisted of the late Willie Vicoy (UPI), Sol Vanzi ( American Broadcasting Corporation) and Louie Perez (Manila Bulletin). At the time, I was Bicol correspondent for the Times Journal.
Sitio Tinobran in barangay Sua in Camalig town was only three kilometers away from the nearest lava channel.
When darkness set in, Mayon’s mood turned to malevolent and that was when one thought we could get buried by lava flow in the dead of night.
After all, we were only three kilometers away from the towering inferno that was the crater of the volcano. At first, the group was simply excited. Then wethey heard the sound of foghorn akin to some pressure coming from a steamship. It felt like someone was being sucked violently from the bowels of the earth.
Then we heard the mountain growl for real. The effect was eerie. One’s instant reaction was simply to go back to the town proper as quickly as possible.
I remembered that the late Vicoy was unfazed by the The Big Growl. “Go ahead. Erupt. Show your power,” he shouted in the dark night.
As if challenged, the volcano rumbled anew and one felt my hair stand on end. Vicoy asked me to peep through his powerful camera resting on a tripod.
For the first time, what looked like pebbles coming from the crater were actually boulders the size of a residential house. One noted one violent eruption in particular and realized that the rumblings didn’t originate from the crater but from the impact of the explosion of huge boulders on the slope.
In the morning, we saw real, flaming lava scalding the vegetation just a kilometer and a half away from us. Someone invited the group to go where the lava actually flowed. We advanced and just a kilometer away, we saw how the green vegetation turned to gray with the onset of the boiling mud.
Then the fumes started coming our way. No amount of Pedro Domecq could make us stay and so we retreated back to Camalig town to spare our lives.
We always remembered that close encounter with Mayon’s lava flow as one requested pianist Cecile Licad to play her granduncle’s (Francisco Buencamino) “Mayon Fantasy” for an encore in her 1997 Albay performance.
The eruption scene in the musical piece was for real and the peace and quiet after the rumbling was equally poignant.