LEGAZPI CITY, Philippines—When Mount Mayon erupted in 2001, the Philippine National Red Cross evacuated 957 families from the volcano’s permanent danger zone. When the government announced that the volcano had calmed down, 603 of these families returned to their homes within that hazardous 6-kilometer radius.
 
Eight years and several more threatening volcanic activities since, the number of settlers in the danger zone has even increased.
 
Now, local authorities are addressing the factors that have kept farming families coming back to Mayon’s foot, mainly livelihood and decent homes.
 
The provincial government of Albay is working to permanently relocate some 1,000 families that have settled within Mayon’s danger zone in the past years. It’s been a running program whose completion is now obviously made more urgent by the volcano’s renewed restiveness.
 
Mayon has acted up in the weeks leading to Christmas, and volcanologists say it’s not showing signs of letting up.
 
As of December 24, the provincial disaster coordinating council had evacuated around 10,000 families or 46,064 residents from 31 villages in the province. These evacuees include not only those living within the 6-kilometer permanent danger zone, but also those within the 2 additional kilometers that make up the buffer zone.
 
‘Exhausting, costly’

Since evacuation is costly each time Mayon, the most active Philippine volcano, signals a violent eruption, there has to be permanent relocation for settlers.
 
“It (danger zone) should be off-limits for settlement. Because if we (local government) would allow it, every time Mayon erupts, we have to evacuate the people living near the volcano. It is exhausting, costly, and inconvenient,” Eduardo Laguerta, resident volcanologist of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs), told Newsbreak.
 
“In the long term, it would encourage more settlers to live there, adding burden to the government during the evacuation,” he said.
 
Albay’s public safety and emergency head Cedric Daep said that the hazards brought by Mayon are inevitable, and the logical step for the local government to take is keep the people away from the hazards by relocating them.
 
Phivolcs set the 6-kilometer permanent danger zone based on Mayon’s 29 eruptions, where every time destructive pyroclastic materials reached the radius.
 
Fertile grounds

The local government began to gradually relocate danger-zone residents after the 1993 eruption. But since most of the dwellers have farms located inside the danger area, it has been hard to convince them to move somewhere safe.
 
In 1993, pyroclastic flow from Mayon killed 75 tomato farmers who refused to leave their farms despite the alarm raised by Phivolcs.
 
"We can't control the minds of the people. It is a public lot. No one can force them to leave. Secondly, the land around Mayon is very fertile that they prefer to grow their crops there,” Daep said.
 
Volcanic soil is free fertilizer for farmers. Even now, slopes around the cone-shaped Mayon are covered by rice paddies and coconut and vegetable farms.
 
Although the government intends to close the danger zone for habitation, Daep said it would still allow residents to maintain their farms within the area. Around 3,744 hectares of agricultural land can be found around the danger zone.
 
P150,000 for a house

Albay Mabuhay Task Force, which oversees the relocation program, said that they target to build houses not just for the 1,000 families from the danger zone but for a total of 10,700 families hit by past disasters.
 
The National Housing Authority (NHA) is developing relocation sites in the towns of Daraga, Sto. Domingo, Camalig, Polangui, Guinobatan, and in the cities of Legazpi and Ligao.
 
After typhoon Reming triggered a lahar flow in 2006 that buried thousands of houses in Albay, the NHA began to develop 136.99 hectares of land in 15 resettlement sites in the province. The project was funded by P750 million from the national government’s Calamity Assistance and Rehabilitation (CARE) budget.
 
The resettlement sites would have 10,223 houses built, according to the NHA report. So far, 5,060 houses have been constructed.
 
Daep estimated that the government would need at least P150,000 to construct a descent home, excluding the cost of  land where it will be built. For the families from the danger zone alone, the local government will need at least P150 million.
 
Alternative livelihood

Rodel Madrona, coordinator of the rehabilitation program, said that since government also spends much for relief assistance and other rehabilitation projects, the budget for resettlement is often not enough. In the past, he said, the government had to tap multilateral and non-government agencies like the International Organization for Migration, the United States Agency International Development, and the United Nations for extra funding.
 
To spend less for laborers who would build the shelters, the local government and its donor require the displaced residents to help in the construction for at least 500 hours.
 
Daep said that residents who own lands inside the danger zone should also be compensated to convince them to leave. The provincial assessors are currently reviewing the number of residents who already have land titles inside the danger zone.
 
Although the government would still allow farming around the danger zone, Daep said they want to attract investments inside the relocation sites to give displaced families alternative livelihood.
 
The CARE projects, for instance, has opened trainings for handicraft-making in the resettlement sites. (Newsbreak)