We will talk about a beautiful island and whoever understands… understood.
What is so special about this place? It is an island inside a lake, which is inside a volcano, which is inside a larger lake, which is inside an island.
Do you want it even better? And the island itself is in islands. In a cluster of Pacific islands, in one of the archipelagos that make up the Philippines.
But as one tries to describe to the other what exactly is happening with this awkward geography, he realizes that he probably doesn't need it anymore: The volcano erupted again this year and the lake no longer exists.
The first lake, the one in the volcano. So the island is no longer an island?
Luzon is the largest and most populous island in the Philippines, where the capital is located. Manila and Cezon, the largest city in the complex. Luzon is also extremely volcanic, with Pinatubo and 19 other volcanoes. Some are active and others have to give signs of life from the Holocaust.
Pinatumbo may be the best known, but it is neither the most active nor the scariest. This "honor" unfortunately belongs to the residents of Taal, some fifty kilometers south of Manila.
Until the beginning of the year, you admired a paradise beauty lake, Lake Taal, which, however, had its own nightmare in its heart. An extremely active volcano (33 recorded eruptions) that has claimed a huge tax on human lives and has been constantly roaring since 1991, after a relatively quiet period after its last eruption in 1977.
Taal is located in the so-called "Ring of Fire", an extremely unstable and seismic area in the Pacific Ocean basin. There the tectonic plates dance and there you will find over 75% of the total volcanoes of the universe.
Despite the nightmarish parchments, Taal was a major tourist attraction, as everyone took the boat to see the volcano island. After a few hours of hiking or horseback riding you could admire the lake inside the crater, in the center of which was the Vulcan Point. The jewel of this wonderful geological game.
In Luzon So there is a lake, Lake Taal. Inside the lake there is a volcano, the Taal volcano. The island-volcano Taal. At the top of the volcano, several hundred meters above sea level, is its caldera, carved into the mountains for thousands of years.
The caldera is filled with water, rainwater, creating a volcanic lake, the largest volcanic lake on the planet.
In the center of this lake is a tiny island, Vulcan Point. The world's largest "third class island", an elegant and comprehensive way to describe its status as an island in a lake, located on another island, in a lake, on another island. And all this in an archipelago Pacific.
Vulcan Point was one of the few islands in the world for which we had to invent a new way of describing. In what way? "Island in an island lake in an island lake". And as we got used to it, the eruption of January 12, 2020 wiped out the lake λί
Lake Taal was known as the Yellow Lake. Its formation took place in 1911, after another eruption, although it was never clear how it kept its surface level stable. Most likely, the water lost from the exhaust was replenished by rainfall.
After the explosion on January 12, satellite images showed that the water in the crater had disappeared. Again the reason is unknown, the scientists assume that it dried up due to the cracks that appeared in the caldera from the explosion. Still others suggest that the lava that was lurking in the volcano may have been to blame, evaporating the water.
Even the island is not clear if it survived. The Vulcan Point was just a rocky outcrop of the volcano and without water all around making it an island, no one knows if it stays there and in what condition the eruption left it.
The reports, however, tell us that the Lake begins to form again, thanks to the high rainfall of the area. The latest sources from March speak of a triumphant reappearance of the lake. If the island reappears, we will see…
Taal was never a sleepy dinosaur of the past, but a daydream that did not let humanity forget its presence. It is the second active volcano of the Philippines with 34 most recorded explosions.
In some of them, in a period of 140.000-5.400 years ago, the lake that surrounds the volcano-island was formed. It is an island of 23 square kilometers that houses the volcano.
In the center of the island there is the main crater of the volcano, 2 km in diameter, which also had the crater lake Taal. Both she and the tiny island were among the most picturesque places in the Philippines, captured in millions of photographs.
In its recorded history, Taal has claimed more than 6.000 lives due to its proximity to residential areas and its rich activity.
That is why it is included in the 16 Volcanoes of the Decade, as the International Union of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth (IAVCEI) calls them, within the framework of the program of United States for the "International Decade to Reduce Natural Disasters". Scientists are now watching it day and night.
Despite the appeals of local and foreign experts, however, many still insist on living at a dangerously close distance, risking their lives to make a living from the fertile volcanic soil.
Taal was very active between 1572-1977, with bigger or smaller explosions and more or less casualties. One of the most catastrophic took place in January 1911, causing several hundred earthquakes and scattering the ash within a radius of 2.000 kilometers. More than a thousand people lost their lives.
This explosion completely changed the image inside the caldera. Prior to the January events, the caldera housed many smaller and more colorful lakes: yellow, red, green, etc. They disappeared and were replaced by the largest and most uniform Yellow Lake, the Taal.
On the afternoon of January 12, 2020, 43 years after his last major action in 1977, Taal roared again. And this time it exploded from the center of the crater, as it used to do in the past. However, thanks to the timely information of the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology of the Philippines, the blood tax was reduced to 39 people.
For this to happen, a radius of 14 kilometers from the volcano had to be evacuated, forcing 459.000 people to flee their homes. The damage caused by the destruction of crops and the cessation of economic activity in the region was estimated at several hundred million dollars.
Even the European Union sent 750.000 euros in humanitarian aid. This time the biggest victim of Taal was the lake that hosted the island within an island within an island…
