Phivolcs appeals for info on stolen Mayon equipment

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) on Thursday appealed to the public to report any incident of theft of its volcano monitoring instruments and other equipment, after two solar panels were stolen from its station that tracks the activities of Mayon Volcano.

In a news release, Phivolcs said that the solar panels, of 150 watts each, were discovered to be missing by personnel of the Mayon Volcano Observatory during their routine inspection and preventive maintenance service in the Mayon Rest House on Wednesday.

The station was within the volcano’s 6-kilometer permanent danger zone.

Monitoring gap

Without the solar panels, there was no power supply and therefore no data was transmitted from the station, which hosts instruments for earthquake monitoring and continuous global positioning system (GPS) and tilt meter.

Maria Antonia Bornas, chief of Phivolcs’ volcano monitoring and eruption prediction division, said the incident has resulted in a gap in the monitoring of the country’s most active volcano, which has been on alert level 2 since 2018.“The continuous GPS and tilt data, which monitor ground deformation from this station … is very crucial,” she said in an interview on Thursday.

“The resulting data gaps pose major problems when we want to model the data to see the volume of magma causing the ground deformation,” Bornas added.

She said all of Phivolcs’ monitoring stations are autonomous and solar-powered since the late 1990s because they are positioned in remote areas on the volcanoes.

“We typically have spares … so the panels [for Mayon] will be replaced today,” Bornas said.‘Crater glow’

While one station was temporarily down, she said 10 other remote seismic stations on Mayon Volcano were still able to monitor seismic activity.

The crime was discovered on the same day when Phivolcs reported that a “crater glow” had been detected for the past two days at Mayon Volcano’s summit crater.

Likely caused by hot magmatic gases, state volcanologists said the crater glow suggests that magma, or molten rock, may be “quietly rising” toward the shallow levels of the volcano.

Theft incidents are not new to Phivolcs, despite Republic Act No. 10344, or the Risk Reduction and Preparedness Equipment Protection Act, passed in 2012, that was meant to deter such crimes.

Those found guilty of stealing similar equipment face up to 15 years in prison or a fine of at least P1 million.