The most destructive was on February 1, 1814, when lava flows buried the town of Cagsawa killing 1,200 people.

The belltower of the town's church is all that remains of the once bustling farming center.

The most recent deadly eruption occurred in 1993 and lasted 30 minutes. The lava flows that followed killed 68 people and prompted the evacuation of 60,000 others.

A popular tourist attraction, Mayon is surrounded by local myths and legends.

One of the most popular is the Romeo and Juliet story of a beautiful native princess and her possessive uncle named Magayon.

Her uncle was said to be so possessive of his niece that no man dared go near her.

One warrior, however, was so smitten by her beauty he ignored all warnings, climbed through the window of the royal chamber and enticed the princess to elope with him.

With Magayon in hot pursuit the couple prayed to the gods for help.

Out of nowhere, a landslide buried the uncle alive.

Locals say that Mayon's eruptions is Magayon's anger bursting forth.

But in reality it is a quirk of geography that condemns most of the Philippines to live under perpetual threat of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and potential tsunamis, courtesy of the undersea Pacific Ocean plate.

The archipelago is part of the Pacific "Ring of Fire", an arc of islands that encompasses New Zealand, the eastern edge of Asia, Alaska's Aleutian Islands and through the west coast of North and South America.

The area is constantly rocked by the undersea Pacific plate's constant clash with surrounding plates, leading to earth tremors and melting rock that push out to the surface as volcanic lava.

The Philippine archipelago, with the exception of the western island of Palawan, is hit by at least 20 earthquakes a day, though only a few are felt by humans, said Renato Solidum, head of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. Deadly quakes occur every three or four years.

Mayon, on the Bicol peninsula of the main island of Luzon, is one of 22 Philippine volcanoes that have erupted within recorded history. It is one of six where the institute has installed permanent monitoring stations and equipment.

One of the deadliest recorded eruptions in the Philippines occurred less than 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Manila in June 1991, when the long-dormant Pinatubo volcano blew off its top, killing more than a thousand people.

Millions of tons of sulfur dioxide shot into the stratosphere blocked sunlight and cooled the entire Earth by up to 0.6 degrees Celsius for years afterwards, scientists said.

Related Links
Bring Order To A World Of Disasters