A mud volcano erupted at a temple in Pingtung County’s Wandan Township (萬丹) yesterday, spewing out a large volume of mud and water, which flowed onto surrounding roads and fields.
The eruption, the second at the site since October last year, occurred at about 6am at Huang Yuan Sheng Tien (皇源聖殿), a temple surrounded by farmland in Wannei Village (灣內).
Video of the event showed surges of material thrown as high as the building’s second floor.
Photo courtesy of Wannei Village Warden Chen Yu-i
To keep the mud from entering rice paddies, excavators were mobilized to channel it toward drainage ditches, Wannei Village Warden Chen Yu-i (陳玉意) said.
Normally, a fire would be lit to ignite any gas in the mud, but as the eruption was at a corner of the building, the gas was left to disperse, Chen said.
Mud volcanoes usually erupt in Wandan one to three times a year, he said.
About 90 minutes after the eruption, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake shook the county, prompting speculation that the two events were connected.
However, Central Weather Bureau Seismological Center Director Chen Kuo-chang (陳國昌) said they were not linked, as they occurred far from each other and have different triggers.
The earthquake was centered 30km off Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point, more than 100km from Wannei, Chen Kuo-chang said.
The quake was the result of subsidence and compression of a tectonic plate, he said.
Mud volcanoes are relatively shallow geological events resulting from natural gas flowing through underground crevices that reacts with groundwater and rocks, he said.
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