LEGAZPI CITY, Philippines - The power outages experienced by the service area of the Albay Electric Cooperative (Aleco) have been making it hard for volcanologists monitoring Mayon Volcano’s abnormal activities to promptly send information to government agencies and the public.

Mayon Volcano’s restiveness continued following Tuesday's ash explosions that caused authorities to issue a new 24-hour alert to communities surrounding the volcano.

The seismic network detected 26 volcanic earthquakes in one day compared to a total of 31 volcanic earthquakes recorded from September 7 to 13.

Sulfur dioxide emissions rose to 682 tons a day from Tuesday's 50 tons, said the bulletin issued by the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) on Wednesday. (Saturday's emissions were measured at 818 tons.)

Philvolcs reiterated a strict off-limits order at the six-kilometer danger zone and the seven-km extended danger zone.

Resident volcanologist Eduardo Laguerta said he was trying to operate on standby generators in order to relay the bulletins to the disaster councils and media because the Aleco power supply suddenly went off.

He assured, however, that all the monitoring aspects were properly working and only the electricity supply was their problem.

Edith Catolico, information officer of Aleco, said the brownout was caused by the “tripoff” of the Feeder-4 which is supplying electricity to Phivolcs.

The Aleco management, however, could not give any assurance that similar outages would no longer occur.

On Tuesday, when Mayon blew ash thrice starting at past 5 a.m., the observatory center suffered power outages that rendered it unable to receive fax messages from the central office of Phivolcs in Diliman, Quezon City, which they needed to send to local media.

Several devices, including the archiving server of the Phivolcs, were affected.

Alex Baloloy, senior science research analyst, said the Lignon Hill Observatory Center in Daraga, Albay suffered both hardware and software damage.

“We had to reformat the disk and reinstall software in order to restore the smooth flow of information and data banking system,” he added.

Mayon Volcano, famous for its nearly perfect conical shape, last erupted in 2006.