LEGAZPI CITY, Philippines - Nearly 50,000 Philippine villagers are likely to spend the first few months of 2010 in evacuation centers amid concerns the Mayon volcano will erupt, officials said Thursday.

Chief government volcanologist Renato Solidum warned that although Mayon appeared to be in a lull after two weeks of spectacular lava flows and ash sprays, his agency's instruments showed a major eruption could occur any time.

"The volcano is still active. The danger is still there. So currently the alert level is still maintained at level four," Solidum told the ABS-CBN News television network.

Alert level four means a major eruption could take place within days.

The government has already evacuated 47,000 villagers whose homes are in an eight-kilometer (five-mile) danger zone around Mayon, and they are facing a bleak start to 2010 living in nearby schools and tents.

"We are preparing for (the villagers to spend) up to three months in evacuation centres," Cedric Daep, disaster relief coordinator for Albay province where Mayon is located, told AFP.

He cited the experience of eruptions in 1993, 2001 and 2006 which also forced thousands of people to stay in evacuation centers for months.

Villagers this time are being housed in 29 evacuation centers, most of which are in schools, and the evacuees are being forced to rely on relief goods from the Philippine government as well as international donor agencies.

Daep told AFP that the provincial government and various charities would distribute special New Year's Eve food packs so the people in evacuation centers could still enjoy traditional celebrations.

A major telecoms company was also sponsoring a New Year's concert for the evacuees.

But when school resumes after the end of the holidays, the government will have to find a way to accommodate both students and displaced people, Daep said.

He said some classrooms would be left for the students, and schools would resort to using different shifts to handle more classes.

The 2,460-meter (8,070-foot) volcano, which is about 330 kilometers (200 miles) southeast of Manila, has erupted 48 times in recorded history. In 1814, more than 1,200 people were killed as lava buried the town of Cagsawa.

In 2006 when a powerful typhoon dislodged tons of debris from Mayon slopes three months after an eruption, burying entire towns and killing over 1,000 people.