Maria Evangeline Tenorio Sarmiento struggles to wade through ankle-deep mud and debris to reach her house that’s been inundated with thick sludge.
Inside, the 52-year-old mother of two finds the roof over her kitchen has collapsed under the weight of ashfall.
The once-blue walls are now smeared in a thick layer of gray ash. Her son is up on the roof scraping off the mud in an effort to stop the rest from caving in.
“It was totally destroyed. I only saw it yesterday. I saw our barangay (village) and can’t help but cry,” she told CNN from the ruined house in Laurel in the Philippine province of Batangas.
Sarmiento’s piggery — a new source of income for her — is gone. Her five pigs dead.
“How can we rebuild our lives? How can we start again? I don’t have money to use as capital again,” she said.
It’s a bleak prospect faced by many families in Batangas and Cavite who lost their homes and livelihoods when the Taal volcano — one of the Philippines’ most active — began erupting last Sunday, spewing ash up to 14 kilometers (9 miles) into the air and generating volcanic lightning.
Heavy charcoal-like ash rained down on towns and villages, blanketing everything. Houses and trees buckled under the weight of it. Affected areas had no power or fresh water.
Outside Sarmiento’s hourse, the once bustling markets are empty, the fields left untended, the lush trees now gray and lifeless.
Many people here made their living off the rich land around the volcano, from fishing in the lake or from the many tourists that visit each year.
The volcano, about 37 miles (60 kilometers) south of the capital Manila on the island of Luzon, is like a time bomb. Volcanologists warn a bigger eruption could be yet to come — but no one can predict when, or if, it will explode or settle back down.
Sarmiento was at the local fish market when she heard a loud thunder-like sound followed by thick smoke. Her home lies within 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) of the volcano.
“We went home and I saw my children stuffing all our clothes inside our vehicle, forgetting to put them first inside luggage. We immediately went up to a higher ground,” she said, adding that they stayed with her sister in the nearby town of Santo Tomas.
Thousands like her fled their homes when Taal suddenly rumbled into life. Caught off guard, many sought shelter in temporary evacuation centers carrying only the clothes they were in with little to no possessions.
Seismic activity had been recorded at the volcano since March 2019, dbut that morning the alert level was at one — meaning a hazardous eruption was not imminent.
“The speed of escalation was unexpected,” said Mark Timbal, spokesperson for the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC).
By 7:30 p.m. the alert was raised to four, with Philippine authorities warning that an “explosive eruption” could happen in the coming hours or days. It prompted authorities to urge a “total evacuation” of people within a 14 kilometer (8.7 miles) danger zone of the volcano.
An explosive eruption could be extremely lethal. Ballistic fragments of magma could be violently expelled from the volcano, pyroclastic flows — fast-moving currents of hot gas and volcanic matter — could swallow anything in its path, and the volcano’s slope slumping into the surrounding lake could create a volcanic tsunami.
Residents would also be at risk from deadly toxic gases emitted from the eruption, and mud flows caused by ash mixing with water vapor in the atmosphere.
The lake that fills the caldera was another concern. Any water that intersects with the hot lava could immediately flash into steam and create an explosive system.
“We just had little time to prepare. From the first eruption at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday to the alert level four, we barely had time,” said Francis Tolentino, Senator and former mayor of Tagaytay, which overlooks the volcano and its lake.
Another bigger eruption could potentially send ash — which carries microscopic shards of glass — 100 kilometers (62 miles) away or more, contaminating the air and water supplies in distant locations. More than 25 million people live within 100 kilometers of the volcano.
The priority was to get almost half a million people living within the danger zone to safety. Towns around the banks of Lake Taal were placed under police lockdown and evacuations enforced.
By the following Saturday more than 70,000 people had sought shelter in 300 temporary evacuation centers. Many more are staying with relatives or friends in other provinces.
But in the days since Taal began erupting, a number of people have risked their lives by refusing to leave or returning home to tend farms and livestock or fetch personal belongings, even though a powerful eruption could happen at any time.
For many residents whose living depends on fishing the lake, a good harvest or for those who live hand to mouth doing odd jobs, staying in an evacuation center for an unknown period, while fields spoil or animals die, is a death sentence of its own.
When the Taal volcano erupted in 1754 it lasted six months. The deadliest eruption took 1,335 lives in 1911, and it lasted a few days.
Renz Mateo, 20, is from a small lake-side barangay in Agoncillo and said he sneaks past police every day to return home from a shelter because he said there is not enough food there.
“Most of the people here went to the evacuation center. I live in a very remote area. We also need water. Whatever we get from evacuation area, we try to maximize it. We lack food and water,” he said.
While government and NGO agencies are working to provide shelters with mats, food, water, clothing and hygiene kits, the conditions are cramped and stifling. The evacuation centers are often schools, gymnasiums, or even basketball courts and families sleep on the cold, hard floor or on folded-up cardboard boxes.
Because of the unpredictability of the volcano, no one knows how long they will have to stay there or whether there will be enough supplies to last the weeks or even months.
Mateo, who was escorted out of his neighborhood carrying a sack of rice on his motorbike by police, said he feels “lost.”
NAN