For 131 consecutive days, Mayon Volcano has not stopped. Lava has crept down its flanks, sulfur dioxide has poured from its summit, and rockfalls have rumbled through the night over the towns of Albay province. As of late May 2026, the eruption that began in January has become the longest unbroken eruptive episode in Mayon’s recorded history, surpassing every event cataloged since Spanish-era observers began tracking the volcano in 1616.
Roughly 290,000 people across the province remain displaced, according to figures cited by provincial disaster officials and local news outlets. They are spread across government evacuation centers, converted school gymnasiums, churches, and the homes of relatives willing to absorb extra families. What began as a short-term emergency has hardened into a grinding displacement crisis with no announced end date, straining shelter capacity, local budgets, and the patience of families who left their homes more than four months ago.
A record no one wanted
Mayon has erupted at least 50 times since 1616, and its most destructive event, in 1814, buried the town of Cagsawa and killed more than 1,200 people. But prior eruptions typically followed a pattern: intense paroxysms lasting days or weeks, followed by quiet intervals that let residents return and rebuild. The current episode has broken that cycle.
The Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program, which compiles daily observations reported by the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS), shows no gap in eruptive behavior since January. Its curated summaries document a steady stream of rockfalls, pyroclastic density currents, volcanic earthquakes, and occasional explosive events across the entire period. The NASA Earth Observatory, drawing on the same PHIVOLCS bulletins along with satellite data and peer-reviewed volcanology literature, described repeated sulfur dioxide spikes and glowing lava deposits visible from orbit.
Unlike a single explosive climax that spends a volcano’s energy quickly, Mayon’s current behavior involves steady lava extrusion and persistent degassing, signs that fresh magma continues to feed the surface vent and that the system remains open. Scientists have noted multiple sulfur dioxide surges during the episode, each suggesting a new pulse of molten rock rising from depth.
The first days and the expanding crisis
When activity escalated in January, Philippine authorities moved quickly. About 3,000 people were evacuated and a six-kilometer permanent danger zone was enforced around the summit, covering parts of the municipalities of Camalig, Guinobatan, Daraga, and others on Mayon’s lower slopes. Renato Solidum, then serving as undersecretary at the Department of Science and Technology and the country’s most prominent volcanologist, described the event as a sustained eruption with continuous extrusion of lava and gas, according to an Associated Press report from the early phase of the crisis.
That initial evacuation of 3,000 has since ballooned. As weeks turned into months and PHIVOLCS maintained elevated alert levels, the danger zone held firm and additional communities were told to leave. Provincial tallies grew from thousands to tens of thousands and eventually to the roughly 290,000 figure now widely cited. The number has not been independently confirmed through a retrievable census from the Department of Social Welfare and Development, so it should be treated as an approximation. But even conservative estimates place the displacement well into six figures, making it one of the largest volcano-driven evacuations in the Philippines in recent decades.
Life inside the evacuation centers
Four months in a gymnasium is not the same as four days. Families who grabbed a change of clothes and a bag of rice in January are now managing chronic overcrowding, interrupted schooling, and the slow erosion of income. Farmers who grew rice, coconut, and abaca on Mayon’s fertile lower slopes have watched an entire planting season pass without access to their fields. Small business owners in Legazpi City, the provincial capital, report reduced foot traffic as tourism, normally anchored by Mayon’s photogenic cone, has collapsed under ash advisories and road closures.
Past eruptions in the Philippines and comparable volcanic crises elsewhere have shown that extended shelter stays increase the risk of respiratory illness from poor ventilation, outbreaks of waterborne disease, disrupted vaccination schedules for children, and rising rates of anxiety and depression among adults. No public health data specific to this episode has surfaced in official channels consulted for this article, but the conditions that produce those outcomes, sustained overcrowding, limited medical staffing, and ongoing sulfur dioxide exposure, are present.
Schools within the danger zone have been closed or converted to shelters. The Department of Education has not released province-wide figures on how many students have been affected, but Albay’s proximity to the volcano means that several of its most populated municipalities fall within or just outside the exclusion perimeter. For children already set back by pandemic-era learning losses, another months-long interruption compounds the damage.
What scientists are watching
The central question for volcanologists is whether Mayon’s open-vent, steady-state behavior will wind down gradually or escalate into a larger explosive event. The Smithsonian and NASA summaries describe an eruption that has been remarkably consistent rather than building toward a climax, but consistency is not the same as safety. Sulfur dioxide output has spiked on multiple occasions, and pyroclastic density currents, fast-moving avalanches of hot gas and rock fragments, have traveled down several of Mayon’s drainage channels.
PHIVOLCS issues daily bulletins with earthquake counts, sulfur dioxide flux measurements, and observed hazards, but the full numerical record has not been independently retrieved for this reporting. The institutional summaries from NASA and the Smithsonian are the best available proxies, and when both sources agree on a detail, such as the January start date, the presence of pyroclastic density currents, and elevated gas emissions, readers can treat that detail with high confidence.
What neither source can answer is how much longer the eruption will last. Mayon’s magma supply has shown no sign of exhaustion after 131 days, but volcanic systems can shut off abruptly or shift behavior with little warning. Forward-looking statements about duration or escalation should be treated with caution until additional PHIVOLCS data and peer-reviewed analyses become available.
What is still missing from the record
Several gaps in the public record matter for anyone trying to understand the full scale of this crisis. The 290,000 displacement figure lacks a municipality-level breakdown, making it difficult to assess how many evacuees are in formal government shelters versus informal arrangements with family, a distinction that shapes the type of aid required. Direct PHIVOLCS raw bulletins with precise daily sulfur dioxide tonnages and pyroclastic runout distances have not been independently verified beyond the NASA and Smithsonian compilations. And no local health authority statements describing respiratory illness rates, medical supply shortages, or overcrowding metrics inside shelters have been located in the sources consulted.
These gaps do not diminish the reality on the ground. They do mean that specific numbers, particularly the displacement count and any implied health outcomes, are best understood as informed estimates rather than audited figures. As official bulletins, health reports, and academic studies emerge in the coming weeks, they will either confirm the picture of a record-breaking, slow-burning crisis or complicate it.
A province waiting for the mountain to stop
Mayon’s perfect cone, one of the most photographed volcanic profiles on Earth, has always been both Albay’s greatest asset and its most persistent threat. The same fertile soil that draws farmers up its slopes is the product of centuries of eruptions. The tourism economy that fills Legazpi’s hotels depends on a volcano that, by definition, can turn dangerous at any time.
What makes this episode different is not the violence of the eruption but its refusal to end. At 131 days and counting, it has outlasted every recorded predecessor, and the quarter-million people sheltering across the province are living proof that a slow disaster can be just as punishing as a fast one. Until Mayon’s magma supply falters and PHIVOLCS lowers the alert level, the evacuation holds, the shelters stay open, and the waiting continues.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
