Tanauan residents allowed inside danger zone for 1 hour to get items, feed livestock

Some residents of Tanauan City in Batangas have been temporarily allowed on Saturday to enter the 14-kilometer permanent danger zone after they appealed to local authorities that they needed to get their belongings and feed their livestock.

Authorities allotted one hour to some residents to enter the 14-kilometer danger zone at past 6 a.m., according to a Balitanghali Weekend report by Darlene Cay.

This was after residents continuously arrived at checkpoints from dawn until sunrise, requesting that they be allowed to return to their homes.

Some even went emotional, with one angry resident saying that while they might not have died due to the explosion of Taal Volcano, they are slowly dying because of the situation.

Residents were thus allowed by authorities to enter despite the order of Tanauan Mayor Sweet Halili.

They were asked for their IDs at checkpoints, and will be fetched by barangay officials should they fail to exit within the allotted time.

An emergency meeting will be held by the local government unit of Tanauan to discuss their next action plan, as the permission to residents by authorities was not ordered by Halili.

But as of 10 a.m., authorities have stopped allowing residents to enter the perimeter, except for barangay officials, in accordance with Halili's order for them to roam around and survey their jurisdictions from Saturday midnight up to Sunday midnight.

Some barangay officials have had little time to evacuate their families and belongings as they needed to respond to their constituents.

Some evacuees from Talisay and Laurel have also been allow to briefly return to their homes to get clothes and feed their animals.

In Laurel, residents who wished to enter the danger zone were made to sign a waiver by the local government.

A lockdown has been put in place on Friday noon in 21 barangays in Batangas that are covered by the 14-kilometer permanent danger zone. Eight checkpoints have been set up in Tanauan City.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology issued a list of barangays susceptible to the effects of a magmatic eruption of Taal Volcano. Some of the barangays are in Tanauan City.  —Jamil Santos/KG/MDM, GMA News