Word: lava
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About 70 miles to the south, on the tiny island of Camiguin in the Mindanao Sea, a violent earthquake warned natives that towering Hibok-Hibok might be preparing for another eruption. Last December its molten lava and deadly gases killed hundreds of Camiguenos (TIME, Dec. 17). Now, after the earthquake, a reddish glow in the sky above the volcano is an almost sure sign that the lava has again boiled close to the rim of the crater...
Over the centuries, Camiguin's craters benevolently poured forth soil-enriching lava which made the island abundant beyond the asking. But in periodic moments of ire, the volcanoes visited havoc and death on the people-always, said the elders, because God had been displeased by younger Camiguenos who grew lax in their churchgoing, forgetful of the feast days and neglectful of the sign of the cross. When his children did wrong, an elder would glance fearfully toward the horizon and mutter, "The volcano will get angry...
...Hibok-Hibok got angry again. This time it gave no warning. With a quaking blast it heaved its sulphurous stomach, tossed red-hot boulders bigger than a man across the northeastern portion of Camiguin, sent up clouds of red-hot ash and deadly chlorine. A torrent of glowing molten lava rolled in all directions. Three and a half miles away in Mambajao (pop. 21,000), the island's capital and largest village, children on the way to school, women washing clothes, men on the way to their fields were buried in the rush of lava, burned to death...
...island. To make matters worse, a typhoon raked the island, impeding rescue operations and killing dozens more. By week's end emergency crews from Manila, 450 miles to the north, and from Mindanao had recovered 266 bodies, estimated that 1,500 more were entombed in lava. The Philippine government used warships, fishing craft, even outrigger canoes to evacuate Camiguenos by the thousands from the island. But many of the elders, unshaken in their belief, refused to leave...
...their rich skins glistened with coconut oil. Around their heads and necks they wore garlands of green leaves in strips, like seaweeds, and these too glistened with oil, as though the girls had come out of the sea. Around their waists, to the knee, they wore leaf-clothes, or lava-lavas . . . They swayed about, clapped their hands, shoulders, legs." Later, Adams was introduced to a local version of the striptease called the pai-pai: "In the pai-pai, the women let their lava-lavas . . . or siapas seem about to fall. The dancer pretends to tighten it, but only opens...