World

Under The Volcano

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

March 6, 2000 / 6:28 PM EST / CBS

Philippine villagers who fled a fiery volcano eruption last month are starting to go home, even though scientists say there's still danger. The volcano victims are getting help from a few dozen U.S. soldiers who just happened to be in the neighborhood. It's turning into a beautiful friendship, as CBS News Correspondent Barry Petersen reports.

Since February 24, the volcano they call Mayon -- beautiful woman -- has loosed nature’s wrath. And in it’s cloud covered shadow, the Americans have landed, hoping Mayon would keep her peace.

They are here by chance, part of a joint U.S.-Philippine military exercise. Off the C-130s came supplies and tents. The tents are for temporary housing for volcano refugees.

Lt. Erynn Ranker helped teach local people how to erect the badly-needed structures. "They’re having a lot of problems with overcrowding in the shelters," she says, "and this will allow them to spread out a little bit, so they aren't living on top of each other while the volcano is erupting."


Mayon

Mayon’s destructive reach stretches far. Five miles away from the volcano, you can see enormous boulders that have been hurled here. And if the crater blows again, it can send lava cascading down gullies faster than anyone can escape from it, as fast as 100 mph.

But the danger doesn’t stop the quarrying for volcanic stone, prized in construction.

"We’re afraid," says Solomon Nunez, "but we have to work. We’re always ready to run to the evacuation centers."

Evacuation centers -- schools, actually – are crammed with 80,000 refugees.

Gena Perez found the American tents a spacious home for her children, Vanessa and Donna. It’s a small gift from the Americans, but enough. She thanks them.

Since it began erupting last month, Mayon has released thousands of tons of materials - mostly lava, but also sand, rocks and mud. Although the volcano has been relatively calm for five days, volcanic debris could still bury portions of villages if it is washed down the volcano's slopes by rain, said Raymundo Punongbayan, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. The volcano's most violent eruption, on Feb. 1, 1814, killed more than 1,200 people and buried an entire town in volcanic mud.

No one really wants to stay in the American tent city, but going home is not a decision they can make. It rests with the mood of Mayon.