Taal volcano: Lava spews as 'hazardous eruption' feared

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A volcano in the Philippines has begun spewing lava, as authorities warn that a "hazardous eruption" is possible "within hours or days".

In the early hours of Monday weak lava began flowing out of Taal volcano - located some 70km (45 miles) south of the capital Manila.

It comes after it emitted a huge plume of ash, triggering the mass evacuation of 8,000 people from the area.

Taal is the Philippines' second most active volcano.

Situated on an island in the middle of a lake, it is one of the world's smallest volcanoes and has recorded at least 34 eruptions in the past 450 years.

Image copyrightPHIVOLCS

Image captionWeak lava has began flowing out of the Taal volcano

"Taal volcano entered a period of intense unrest... that progressed into magmatic eruption at 02:49 to 04:28... this is characterised by weak lava fountaining accompanied by thunder and flashes of lightning," the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said in a statement.

But Phivolcs director Renato Solidum said that signs of a hazardous eruption, including "flows of ashes, rocks, gas at speeds of more than 60 kph horizontally" had not yet occurred, according to CNN Philippines.

Phivolcs has now raised the alert level from 3 to 4, out of a maximum of 5.

Authorities have also warned of a possible "volcanic tsunami", which can be trigged by falling debris after an eruption, pushing the water and generating waves.

• Taal volcano provides backdrop to wedding photos

'Covered in ash'

On Sunday, the volcano emitted a giant plume of ash, with rumbling sounds and tremors also reported.

A total of 75 earthquakes have occurred in the Taal region, with 32 of these earthquakes ranking 2 and higher on the earthquake intensity scale, said Phivolcs.

The Official United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said more than 450,000 people are estimated to live within the 14km danger zone of the Taal volcano.

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OCHA Philippines

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Over 450,000 people are estimated to be residing within the 14 km danger zone of the Taal Volcano. On 12 January, alert level 4 was raised and surrounding towns were evacuated. As of 6 a.m. today, @NDRRMC_OpCen reports that over 7,700 people are in 38 evacuation centres.

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Ash fell on several areas nearby with residents advised to wear masks. One resident in metro Manila said shops had begun to run out of masks.

"When I went to my car, I saw it was covered in ash. I hurriedly went to buy a mask from a drugstore but they had run out," Angel Bautista, a resident of Paranaque told Reuters.

The government has warned retailers not to hike mask prices amid the surging demand.

'Grey and lifeless'

By Howard Johnson, BBC News, Tagaytay, Philippines

As we approached the Taal volcano area this morning we saw local residents shovelling thick wet ash from the roads. Pineapple groves, normally verdant and luscious, now looked grey and lifeless.

In the distance Taal continued to billow ash and smoke miles into the sky. As the morning went on the ash clouds became darker.

Police manning a 14km exclusion zone stopped people from travelling into the area close to the volcano, but there was a steady flow of cars and trucks moving out.

On the back of one pick-up truck, I saw a large family with their treasured household possessions. They were moving in the direction of the Philippine capital Manila, where many people are choosing to stay with relatives.

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionCars, buildings and roads have been left covered in ash

Image copyrightEPA

Image captionEven birds have been blanketed by ashfall

The volcanic ash also forced Manila's international airport to suspend all flights on Sunday. Phivolcs had warned that the "airborne ash and ballistic fragments from the eruption... posed hazards to aircrafts".

• The popularity of volcano tourism
• The privately owned volcano that is always active
• Tsunami hazards from volcanoes 'underestimated'

The Civil Aviation Authority announced later on Monday that it had resumed "partial operations" as of 10:00 local time (02:00 GMT) for flights departing the airport and 12:00 for arrivals.

The Philippine stock exchange also announced it would halt all trading on Monday.

Image copyrightREUTERS

Image captionAsh from the Taal volcano has affected thousands of residents in nearby areas

President Rodrigo Duterte's office has also ordered the suspension of government work in Manila and the closure of all schools in the capital.

Earthquakes and volcanic activity are not uncommon in the Philippines, which lies along the Ring of Fire - a zone of major seismic activity, which has one of the world's most active fault lines.

Taal: 'A very dangerous volcano'

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

• The active volcano is at the centre of the 230 sq km Lake Taal, formed by prehistoric eruptions
• Taal is a "complex volcano", which means it doesn't have one vent or cone but several eruption points that have changed over time
• The head of Phivolcs calls Taal "a volcano within a volcano" and says as such it is "very dangerous"
• Taal has erupted in different ways more than 30 times in the past 500 years - most recently in 1977
• A 1911 eruption killed about 1,500 people. A 1974 eruption lasted several months

So much the better!

My column in Mindanao Daily, BusinessWeek Mindanao and Cagayan de Oro Times

OPINION

By KLAUS DORING

 January 10, 2020

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WE could spend all year living healthier, more productive lives, so why do we only decide to make the change at the start of the year? Why do we all make (and break) New Year resolutions?

Many of us will start 2020 with resolutions – to get fit, learn a new skill, eat differently. If we really want to do these things, why did we wait until an arbitrary date which marks nothing more important than a timekeeping convention? British psychologist Tom Stafford asked this. And not only he. The answer tells us something important about the psychology of motivation, and about what popular theories of self-control miss out.

Today is a very cool and rainy day. I am lazy. Not on the mood to do anything. It's even difficult to write this column. But my motivation gets bigger and bigger while writing. New Year resolutions? Many writers discussed about this topic already. Here are my two cents in.

While celebrating during New Year's night, my family and friends found out, that what we want isn't really straightforward. At bedtime you might want to get up early and go for a run, but when your alarm goes off you find you actually want a lie-in. When exam day comes around you might want to be the kind of person who spent the afternoons studying, but on each of those afternoons you instead wanted to hang out with your friends. Believe me - I heard it many times from my students.

You could see these contradictions as failures of our self-control: impulses for temporary pleasures manage to somehow override our longer-term interests. One fashionable theory of self-control, proposed by Roy Baumeister at Florida State University, is the 'ego-depletion' account. This theory states that self-control is like a muscle. This means you can exhaust it in the short-term – meaning that every temptation you resist makes it more likely that you'll yield to the next temptation, even if it is a temptation to do something entirely different.

A corollary of the 'like a muscle' theory is that in the long term, you can strengthen your willpower with practice. So, for example, Baumeister found that people who were assigned two weeks of trying to keep their back straight whenever possible showed improved willpower when asked back into the lab.

But, and more importantly, that theory doesn't give an explanation why we wait for New Year's Day to begin exerting our self-control. If your willpower is a muscle, you should start building it up as soon as possible, rather than wait for an arbitrary date.

Another explanation may answer these questions, although it isn't as fashionable as ego-depletion. George Ainslie's book 'Breakdown of Will' puts forward a theory of the self and self-control which uses game theory to explain why we have trouble with our impulses, and why our attempts to control them take the form they do. The virgin page of a new calendar marks a clean break between the old and new you - a psychological boundary that may help you keep your resolutions.

And, so to speak with Tom Stafford again, Ainslie gives us an answer to why our resolutions start on 1st January. The date is completely arbitrary, but it provides a clean line between our old and new selves. The practical upshot of the theory is that if you make a resolution, you should formulate it so that at every point in time it is absolutely clear whether you are sticking to it or not. The clear lines are arbitrary, but they help the truce between our competing interests hold.

Let me ask you now,  my dear readers: How about your 2020 resolutions!

Davao LGU sets aside P54M to build USEP annex

By Antonio Colina IV 

DAVAO CITY – The City Government of Davao will set aside P54 million to construct an annex buildings of the University of Southeastern Philippines (USEP) in Barangay Malabog, Paquibato District to get more children from poor families to proceed to higher education, Mayor Sara Duterte said.

Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte
(FACEBOOK / MANILA BULLETIN FILE PHOTO)

Duterte said that the budget for the construction of the building would be sourced from the 2020 budget of the City Government, which she hopes to see being completed by next year or 2022 at the latest.

She said that the expansion came after Task Force Peace 911, which was created to take the lead in the implementation of a comprehensive peace-building program of the local government for conflict-affected areas of the city, found out that there is a need to put up a college in Paquibato to get more senior high school graduates to study college.

It is high time to put up higher education institution in Paquibato, as its presence would encourage more students, who are constrained financially to afford the expenses of going into college in downtown, according to Duterte.

She added Paquibato was chosen to host the USEP-Annex as it aligns with the university’s mandate to reach out to the students in conflict-affected areas.

“It’s on track, and this project – the USEP-Annex- is already moving,” she said.

The Peace 911 was the successor of the defunct Davao Peace Committee, the local peace panel created to hold localized peace initiative with the New People’s Army operating in the hinterlands of the city.

On December 23, 2019, the mayor asked the Duterte administration to exclude the city from the coverage of the GRP-NDFP peace talks, as it would only dampen the gains of the “Peace 911” in all 13 barangays of Paquibato District and Barangay Dominga in Calinan District.

“To be covered by the ceasefire or the peace negotiations will only disrupt and threaten the gains of our process of peace and development in these communities formerly controlled by the terrorists,” she said.

She claimed that Peace 911, a comprehensive peace-building program of the local government for conflict-affected areas of the city, had successfully removed the remaining communist guerrillas operating in Paquibato District and Barangay Dominga.

She said the civilian-led Peace 911 capacitated the Lumad farmers on farming and marketing, and linked them directly to buyers for their produce through the so-called “Peace Economy.”

Davao de Oro benefits Confucius institute program and the first LGU beneficiary in the Philippines

Davao de Oro---
Finally, Confucius Institute has been successfully inaugurated at the Ateneo de Davao University (ADDU) in partnership with Huaqiao University on December 19, 2019 at the ADDU, Davao City.

Attending the inauguration were the Vice President (VP) of Huaqiao University- Mr. Zeng Lu, Mr. Zhang Xincheng, Director of International Exchange and Cooperation, Mr. Hu Peian, Director of Chinese Language and Culture Education and Mr. Xiang Shimin, Director of the Office of the Board of Trustees, Ms. Sholai Lim and the Davao de Oro officials and employees.

Davao de Oro as the beneficiary of four (4) programs under this institute and the first LGU beneficiary in the country represented by the 1st Lady of the Davao de Oro Province Ma’am Sholai Lim in behalf of Governor Jayvee Tyron L. Uy.

Confucius Institute  is a public educational organization under the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, whose stated aim is to promote Chinese language and culture, support local Chinese teaching internationally, and facilitate cultural exchanges.

Christine Torino Dompor- Provincial Tourism Officer warmly welcomed the visit of Huaqiao University executives to Davao de Oro headed by its university VP Mr. Zeng Lu joined by his director of international cooperation and exchange, director for language and culture and director for the board of trustees along with the members of Huaqiao Alumni Association who are based in the Philippines.

Huaqiao University is a national university and was founded in 1960 for students of overseas Chinese backgrounds (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, Singapore and the Phils.) to pursue tertiary education in their ancestral homelands. The university has two campuses in the cities of Xiamen and Quanzhou, known for their large numbers of overseas Chinese who have roots in these cities.

According to Dompor that Huaqiao University officially opened its doors to the province early this year. Under the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative of China which the Philippines is part of, “we were given the opportunity to avail of the learning programmes and sent five students during the summer camp immersion last June 2019 for 7 days and five senior high school students last September 2019 for a 4- year intensive Mandarin Language course.

Dompor added that there are 25 government officials and employees of the province studying Chinese language and culture for six months that will be completed by May or June 2020, the first LGU in the country and the pioneering class of the newly inaugurated Confucius Institute of the Ateneo de Davao University.

“International cooperation, partnership and mutual understanding with international communities such as China will surely create more and more golden opportunities for Davao de Oro,” Dompor added.

On the other hand, Sholai Lim expressed her gratitude as she personally witnessed the inauguration of the Confucius Institute in Ateneo de Davao University, the first and only in the islands of Visayas and Mindanao, and probably the last to be installed in the Philippines.

Lim added “the opening of the Confucius Institute is a big step forward for us to learn new language, to understand deeper the Chinese culture and facilitate future exchanges between our people to foster international cooperation as we dream for a more cohesive and peaceful society.

Lim also congratulate the visionary University President of Ateneo de Davao Rev. Fr. Joel Tabora, SJ, Consul General Li Lin together with Asst. Consul Tung, and to the hardworking professors of AdDU Jenner Chan, Dr. Ging Panda and Prof. Hadji Balajadia to the faculty, administrators and officials of Huaqiao University, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio and Vice Mayor Sebastian Duterte.

( Rey Antibo, ID Davao de Oro)

Confucius Institute has been successfully inaugurated at the Ateneo de Davao University (AdDU) in partnership with Huaqiao University on December 19, 2019 at the AdDU, Davao City with the Davao De Oro officials and employees as the first LGU in the Country as beneficiary of the four (4) programs of the institute in learning the basic Chinese language and their culture.  (C. Dompor FB Post)

Optimism and golden bounties for Dabawenyos

Davao De Oro Province--- Davao De Oro provincial government celebrated the first Convocation for the year 2020 at the Provincial Capitol of Cabidianan, Nabunturan. It is a time for optimism and excitement. Year 2020 serves as a gate for all employees to stay focused and maintain the positive vibe at work, making 2020 the best entry year for Davao De Oro, a province of Golden Opportunities.

A Holy Mass was also celebrated as part of the activity, highlighted from the homily is to focus on finding one's own light that would definitely lead us to a better relationship with the almighty, thus becoming good employees for a better province.

Updates from the congressional office were given by the 1st and the 2nd District Representatives respectively Hon. Manuel "Waykurat" E. Zamora and Hon. Ruwel Peter Gonzaga. More or less P4 Billion pesos will be allotted for both Districts I and II of Davao De Oro according to Congressman Manuel E. Zamora from the National Budget for the year 2020, and will soon be signed by President Rodrigo Roa Duterte. The National Housing Authority (NHA) also gave the province an amount worth more or less 60 Million Pesos allotted for 100 housing units to three different municipalities of the province. All housing unis for the said project will be given to our Indigenous (IP) brothers and sisters within the province. Target for the next upcoming budget will be giving 100 housing units to all municipalities of Davao De Oro.

The UNCHR (United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees) complimented the Province for the "Pabahay Project" which gave its constituents not only a house to live in, but also accompanied with enough space for planting crops and domesticating animals as a source of income.

"Finally, for the last 3 years together with all the officials, our province was officially renamed last December 2019 to Davao De Oro. I've heard a lot of positive comments and feedback about it.This year, we made sure that our daily rate for our job orders will fall with the requirements of DOLE and this is a big rate compared to the past years and we will also reward our employees who stayed and remain with us up until now." said Governor Jayvee Tyron L. Uy. The Provincial Government of  Davao De Oro will be able to hire skilled workers and ensure a good paying rate that will be able to compete high-paying private companies. (Jasteen P. Abella, ID DAVAO DE ORO)

Photocaptions Davao De Oro 2020-  Davao De Oro Province celebrated the first Convocation for the year 2020 at the Provincial Capitol of Cabidianan, Nabunturan, Davao De Oro. It is a time for optimism and excitement. Year 2020 serves as a gate for all employees to stay focused and maintain the positive vibe at work, making 2020 the best entry year for Davao De Oro, a province of Golden Opportunities.(Photo by Jonie Cadiz)

Flight times getting longer?

My column in Mindanao Daily, BusinessWeek Mindanao and Cagayan de Oro Times

EVER wondered why flight times seem to be getting longer? Yes, I do. Checking my last ticket Davao-Manila-Davao and remembering some  real flight times from the past, I wonder why.  I learned from BBC-author Kathryn B. Creedy, that it’s called "padding", a phenomenon that helps airlines arrive on time – but at a cost.

My previous flight back to Davao from Manila one hour twenty minutes. My ticket showed a "flight-time" of exactly 2 hours. I guess, it’s a secret the airlines don’t want you to know about, especially given the spillover effects for the environment.

Padding is the extra time airlines allow themselves to fly from A to B. Because these flights were consistently late, airlines have now baked delays experienced for decades into their schedules instead of improving operations. It might seem innocuous enough to the passenger – after all, what it can mean is that even though you take off late, you’re pleasantly surprised to arrive on time at your destination. Remember the final arrival announcement by the smiling stewardess last time?

Kathryn Creedy is right in saying that however, this global trend poses multiple problems: not only does your journey take longer but creating the illusion of punctuality means there’s no pressure on airlines to become more efficient, meaning congestion and carbon emissions will keep rising.

“On average, over 30% of all flights arrive more than 15 minutes late every day despite padding,” says Captain Michael Baiada, president of aviation consultancy ATH Group citing the US Department of Transportation’s Air Travel Consumer Report. The figure used to be 40% but padding – not operational improvements – boosted on-time arrival rates. “By padding, airlines are gaming the system to fool you.”

So, how late is late? The ultimate goal is ‘A0’, or arrival at the gate exactly on time. If a flight is early or late, it can disrupt several other things – like gate availability and airport capacity.

To be fair, global airlines have invested billions of dollars in technologies to enable more efficient flight paths, according to industry body Airlines for America. But this has not moved the needle on delays, which are stubbornly stuck at 30%.

A lot of different things can cause a delay but Baiada believes 80% of the factors involved – like schedule, airport arrival flow queueing, aircraft availability, gate availability, maintenance and crew legality – are within the airlines’ control. But to date they have left it to air traffic control to remedy once planes are in the air.

Another option could be to reduce the number of flights – but airline flight schedules are designed to meet buyer demand. So, if there were fewer flights, fares would increase.

Well, should we give up and telling ourselves: better late than never? So what does all this mean for passengers? With airlines gaming the system, as it stands, flight times will likely increase as more and more planes take to the skies.

Fact is also that many airlines will try to make it tricky for passengers to get an eligible claim accepted. The tactic of extending flight times is yet another way to decrease a passenger’s chance of filing a claim and getting financially compensated for the hassle they have gone through.

Better late then never? I guess so.