Social Welfare and Development Secretary Esperanza Cabral said her department has actually started stockpiling food and non-food supplies worth P300,000 for the affected Sorsogon towns.
Cabral has placed the department’s disaster management team on alert so it could immediately respond when Bulusan erupts.
The DSWD estimates that 5,525 families or 29,835 people from 24 barangays in Bulusan, Casiguran, Irosin and Juban towns are at risk during a major eruption.
So far, only the towns of Casiguran and Irosin have requested the DSWD for assistance. Cabral said their residents have been provided with food items, surgical masks and kitchen utensils.
Bulusan, which began acting up last March, exhibited "wispy to weak and sometimes voluminous" steaming and "generally low" earthquake during the past 24-hour observation period, according to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs).
The volcano’s sulfur dioxide emission, however, rose to 2,310 tons per day from 459 tons last June 20, it said. No ash explosions were detected.
Meanwhile, the Regional Disaster Coordinating Council said it was strictly enforcing a ban on all human activities within the volcano’s four-kilometer permanent danger zone to ensure zero casualty in case Bulusan erupts.
"We don’t have to be too technical about where these threatened barangays are," said Arnel Capili, regional director of the Office of Civil Defense, during a conference at Camp General Simeon Ola in Legazpi City yesterday. — Sheila Crisostomo, Celso Amo