PCG removes bancas off Taal coastline; enforces total lockdown

FILE: LOCKDOWN. Personnel of the Philippine Coast Guard removing a motorized banca from the Taal lakeshore after the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) identified the coastline as a high-risk area and imposed “total lockdown” on Thursday (January 23). The PCG said its personnel has removed a total of 16 boats, which have been kept in a safe location and will be returned to its owners after Taal Volcano calms down. (Photo courtesy of PCG via PNA)

MANILA – The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) has removed a total of 16 bancas along the coast of Taal Lake for safekeeping and to keep locals from venturing out into the lake as Taal Volcano is still restive.

In a statement on Friday, the PCG said its Task Force Taal in Southern Tagalog have removed the motorized bancas on Thursday after the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Region IV-A (Calabarzon) declared the coastline of Taal Lake as a high-risk area.

“The motorbancas are temporarily secured in a location within the vicinity so that the owners may immediately access their boats once Taal Lake is declared safe for fishing,” the PCG said.

In the memorandum signed by DILG regional director Elias Fernandez Jr.

, local officials were ordered to remove bancas from the Taal lakeshore and to keep them in locations inaccessible to civilians.

“Remove the bancas from the lakeshore and vicinity, and bring them to appropriate locations, where civilians will not have access, for safekeeping,” the memorandum read.

The order was only one of three measures that were part of the “total lockdown” order on villages declared as high-risk areas.

Other measures specified in the memo are ensuring all displaced families and individuals are accommodated in evacuation centers and to establish warning signages forbidding the entry inside the 14-kilometer high-risk areas and other alternate passages.

In an interview on Friday, Philippine Institute for Volcanology and Seismology Officer-in-Charge Renato Solidum said Taal Volcano recently spewed smoke with ash which indicated continued underground activity in the volcano.

Magma which was recently detected below the towns of Lemery, San Nicolas, and Agoncillo in Batangas, has reached the area five kilometers below the surface of the volcano.

Solidum said a hazardous eruption remained possible and imminent and called for the cooperation of affected individuals for their own safety.