Marilyn La Luz had always known that Taal Volcano Island was a danger zone, but she never thought of leaving.
Her parents lived there all their life and she grew up on its lower slopes amid patches of lush greenery, frolicking horses and a view of Taal Volcano’s crater just a few kilometres away through an easy climb.
“We lived in paradise. Everyone who comes to Taal Volcano even says so,” she said.
It was a paradise that drew in thousands of tourists and ensured a comfortable income for 32-year-old La Luz who worked as a tour guide.
She would make 350 Philippine pesos (about $8) for every tour she booked. On average, she could book about two trips in a day.
But it was the tips of the foreign tourists that were most lucrative.
“Tourists tip in dollars – sometimes $10 or $20. The Americans are the best tippers because I think tipping is really part of their culture. Once a guest heard it was my birthday on the day of our tour and gave me $100.”
Now in an evacuation centre, La Luz cannot help but think about all that she and her family lost when Taal Volcano began erupting on Sunday after more than 40 years of being dormant.
Plumes of smoke that burst out of Taal dumped volcanic ash – fine particles of rock and glass fragments of that are denser than snow – on La Luz’s beloved paradise and turned it into a wasteland.
Mark Timbal, spokesman for the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council in the Philippines, said an aerial inspection confirmed that vegetation and animal life on the volcano island was dead, burned by the heat.
“It is now a no man’s land. It’s like heaven and earth fell on it.”
Frequent and intensifying volcanic earthquakes and road cracks called “fissures” prompted the authorities to begin forced evacuations to move an estimate 300,000 residents living within the 14-kilometre (8.6 miles) “danger zone” around Taal Volcano to safer ground.
“What we are observing now, the (volcanic) earthquakes and the fissures (road cracks) are signs that magma is still rising in Taal,” Mariton Bornas head of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PhilVocs) told the media on Tuesday. “It has opened up. If there is magma coming from beneath, it will quickly ascend. There are no more blockages.”
In some towns in the province of Batangas, some 25 kilometres (15 miles) away from Taal Volcano, road cracks have destroyed some homes.
The volcano has been on alert level 1 since last year, but PhilVocs raised the level to 4 last Sunday warning that a “hazardous eruption” was possible within hours or days. The highest alert level is 5.
Authorities are preparing for two extreme worst-case scenarios: one where the eruption could take place over a few days and another where the eruption lasts for weeks.
“It could be short, it could be long,” PhilVocs volcano expert Bornas said, comparing Taal’s most recent volcanic activity with previous eruptions.
In 1911, Taal erupted over a period of three days in January. In 1754, it was drawn out over a period of seven months.
2020 Al Jazeera Media Network