LEGAZPI CITY, Philippines — The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) is hurrying up the installation of new monitoring devices around Mayon in an effort to come up with complete data on the volcano's escalating activities so as to determine whether there is already a need to raise the alert level or not.
Government scientists from the central station of the Phivolcs are scheduled to arrive early Wednesday morning by land transport and immediately install additional gadgets and at the same time, upgrade the existing instruments to fully monitor the activities of the Mayon Volcano.
Resident volcanologist Eduardo Laguerta said a vital monitoring installation in the Mayon Resthouse facing Tabaco City had been damaged by lightning, which disabled its device for data transmission to the Lingon Hill Observatory Center in Legazpi.
"This one needs replacement, that is why a team of scientists from our central office in Manila are coming tomorrow to fix the defective instruments in order to assure a round-the-clock monitoring of Mayon's activity even though we are still under alert level 1," he said Tuesday.
Laguerta added that the correlation spectrometer (Cospec), which effectively monitored the sulfur dioxide emission in past eruptive activities of Mayon, had to be returned to the manufacturer for recalibration and for conversion into digital.
"But as for the past few days without data on the sulfur dioxide tonnage, the team is bringing a Fly-spec (Fly spectrometer) which functions like the Cospec and is even more modern because of other data capabilities such as the global positioning system built in it," he said.
He added that the Fly-spec -- a handheld device -- was donated by the US Geological Survey.
Laguerta all other devices commonly used to monitor active volcanoes, such as a ground deformation monitoring device, have been placed on standby. "(T)hey are on standby at the central office and are deployed wherever and whenever the need arises such as Mayon today, which needs closer watch than ever before."
Several volcanoes share the use of the system such as Taal in Batangas, Hibok-Hibok in Camiguin Island, Canlaon in Negros Island, Pinatubo in Zambales and Mayon Volcano here.
Mayon's latest daily update (for the past 24-hour monitoring) revealed six low frequency quakes, two high frequency tremors and two short duration tremors, according to Laguerta.
Albay Governor Joey Salceda said disaster handling units down to the village level have been primed to respond to calamity in case of another Mayon eruption.
"Just in case Phivolcs increases the status to alert level 2 due to the glowing crater, increased volcanic quakes and inflated slopes, Albay will conduct awareness briefing among the barangay disaster coordinating councils (BDCCs) inside the six-kilometer radius permanent danger zone," he said.
Salceda, chair of the Albay Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council, said they were updating their information on the number of residents who would be affected by an eruption.
