24 Nov 2025 · 2 min
Mount Bulusan in the Philippines erupted, forcing about 1,500 families to evacuate. The volcano sits 320 miles from Manila in the Bicol region. John Jonas advises checking on staff and contractors in the area as cleanup continues.
Episode 138
About 1,500 families
About 320 miles
About 43 miles
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 138, Mount Bulusan erupted. So as I record this, this is a little bit out of date just because I went to Europe and I spent a month there and I'm recording past episodes that are maybe a little bit behind but not too long ago. So I'm going to talk about this one a little bit differently. Not too long ago, Mount Bulusan, which is in the southeast part of the main big island Luzon, erupted. And this, it resulted in evacuating like 1500 families from their homes. It spewed ash all over the place. A large part of the area was just covered in ash, lava flowing all over. I mean it was, it's a big deal. So let me just tell you a little about this. Mount Bulusan is in, is in Sorsogon, which is in the Bicol region. It's on the main island but it's not in like the Manila area. It's part of the, it's like the southern southeastern most part of the, of that island. It's about 320 miles from, from Manila. So it's, it's not like super close, but it's only 43 miles from the capital of the province, which is Albay. If you have ofs in the region, now's a good time to check up on them like see, hey, how are you doing? How much did this affect you? How's the recovery from it? How's the cleanup? How are you doing? So let me just talk a little bit about volcanic volcanoes in the Philippines. It's an island nation, which means most of it came from volcanoes and they have volcanic eruptions regularly in the Philippines. So I believe it was last year. It could have been the year before. Years blur together to me, but there was a really big eruption and it affected millions of people for weeks on end. It was, it was a really, really big deal. This one was not as big. But just so you know, this is gonna happen like you're gonna have volcanic eruptions in the Philippines. You're gonna have some of them that will seriously affect things. Just like you can have typhoons and you're gonna, there's natural disasters are a part of life there. They know that it's probably different than where you live because you don't have them very often. But for them normal, it's part of life. It's not fun and it causes all kinds of destruction. So it's just something to keep in mind. Pay attention to when it happens. And what's going on with your people in the Philippines.
