Eruption?

Thousands have been evacuated from the areas surrounding the Mayon volcano in the Philippines after it began oozing lava and shooting plumes of ash. “State volcanologists raised the alert level on the cone-shaped, 8,070-foot (2,460-meter) Mayon volcano overnight to two steps below a major eruption after ash explosions and dark orange lava fragments glowing in the dark trickled down the mountain slope. Nearly 50,000 people live in a five-mile (eight-kilometer) radius around the mountain, and authorities began moving thousands of them in case it erupts, Albay provincial Gov. Joey Salceda said. ‘Whatever the volcano does, our target is zero casualty,’ Salceda said, adding that he had decided to cancel a trip to Copenhagen, where he was to attend the U.N. climate conference to discuss his central Albay province’s experience with typhoons and other natural disasters.”