LEGAZPI: Intense lava fountains shot like fireworks up to 2,300 feet into the air above Mayon, the Philippines’ most active volcano, on Tuesday as showering debris turned morning skies dark and spread fear among anxious residents.

More than 40,000 people have already fled since smoke and ash started spewing from the mountain, with scientists warning of the danger of an explosive eruption and authorities urging people not to be complacent.

Mayon shot out a five-kilometre-high ash column early on Tuesday as a rain of fine debris brought daytime darkness in some areas, volcanologists and local authorities said. “People got scared. The kids did not understand what was happening, then suddenly it got dark and you could not see who you were with,” Danny Garcia, a spokesman for Albay province, said.

The summit of the mountain was shrouded by a dense column of steam and hot rocks, creating fanciful shapes in the sky.

“The explosion looks like a cauliflower or an octopus,” Ed Laguerta, Mayon’s resident volcanologist from the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs), said. “Hot ash ascends and since the volcano is conical, the pyroclastic flow seems to be the tentacles,” he added, referring to a mix of hot lava, ash and volcanic gas flowing down the volcano’s flanks.

Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2018