The eruption of the volcano is slowly but surely intensifying as the active lava dome continues to grow with magma rising into it. A series of moderately large pyroclastic flows occurred this morning shortly after midnight local time, descending to the base of the summit cone, and reaching approx. 2 km length.
As the lava dome, a hill-shaped mass of viscous lava erupted in the summit crater and piling up there, is growing, more and more unstable hot lava material is accumulating and prone to collapse into hot rock falls, which in turn often develop into very dangerous pyroclastic flows, hot avalanches of hot gas, fine and large rock fragments as the gas-rich lava disintegrates while descending.
Larger ones could occur any time, threatening areas in potentially many kilometers distance, especially around the river valleys.
The increasing trend of activity is also shown in the continuous rise of seismic activity detected by the volcano observatory.
