Intense lava fountains shot like fireworks up to 700 metres (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 (three-mile) ash column early 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, told AFP. 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), told AFP. Published in Daily Times, January 24th 2018.