By Josh Aseo || Photo by Inquirer.net

Over 87,000 civilians were displaced after the eruption of Mount Kanlaon in the Negros Islands at approximately 3:03 p.m. on December 9, 2024.

“The eruption produced a voluminous plume that rapidly rose to 3,000 meters above the vent and drifted west-southwest. Pyroclastic density currents or PDCs descended the slopes on the general southeastern edifice based on IP and thermal camera monitors,” said the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS).

PHIVOLCS later issued an evacuation warning to civilians living within a 6 km radius of the volcano’s summit and warned of the possible continued eruption in the coming days.

In a follow-up statement on December 10, the Office of Civil Defense reported the successful evacuation of 2,880 families, or around 9,400 individuals from the municipalities of Bago, Pontevedra, La Castellana, and La Carlota.

PHIVOLCS raised the alert level of Kanlaon from Level 1 to Level 2 on June 3 due to an explosive eruption in the summit vent resulting in the evacuation of 4,752 individuals and a damage of over ₱151 million to the agriculture sector. The alert level was then raised to Level 3 after the eruption on December 9.

The latest eruption made history as the first ever magmatic eruption in over 100 years with the last recorded magmatic eruption happening in 1902.