By Aaron B. Recuenco Legazpi City – In a quarrying site near the six-kilometer permanent danger zone, the roar of engines and metal from heavy earth-moving equipment has been silent for many days now. The area is empty and still; workers have evacuated to safer grounds after Mayon Volcano first showed signs of an eruption. Instead, the powerful roar that sounds like several airplanes landing and taking off at the same time filled the air every once in a while. After the sound, Mayon Volcano put up a grand, but scary, show – spewing ash, gas, and lava high up in the air,and eventually producing a fat cloud of ash that looks like it came from a bomb. We were near the six-kilometer danger zone when that eruption happened at 2 p.m., Wednesday. According to Google map, we were some 6.3 kilometers away from the Mayon Volcano summit. On that spot, the sound was eerie and scary – it shook the ground where we stood; and second, the odor of sulfur reeked. Just a day before that eruption, tons of pyroclastic materials approximately 1,000-degree Celsius were spewed by Mayon. Some landed over the five kilometer mark from the crater. That eruption prompted the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) to raise the alert level to No.  4. The agency also extended the danger zone to eight kilometers around the mouth of the volcano, especially in the southern part which includes Legazpi City where lava flow is expected to reach. Visiting their cattle But the roaring sound and the rumbling ground did not scare Renato Menya from keeping away from his cows. At the time of the eruption, he was actually inside the six-kilometer permanent danger zone in Barangay Mabinit. "I fed my cows there. The last time I fed them was yesterday so I had to go back," Menya told the Manila Bulletin as he casually walked back to their house located within the eight-kilometer danger zone. But what frightened him, he said, was that during Monday’s eruption, he was right inside the permanent danger zone. "The sound was really loud and there was earthquake. I don't know if it was felt in the city proper but the combination of the roaring sound and the earthquake really scared me," said Menya. He said that it reminded him of the volcano’s eruption in 1993 when 77 of his fellow farmers in the nearby Barangay Buyuan were hit by pyroclastic materials. During one of the eruptions on Tuesday, the same type of pyroclastic materials that killed the 77 farmers were ejected several kilometers up in the air and some of them landed on the five-kilometer mark from Mayon summit in the Buyuan side. That was just a few kilometers away from Barangay Mabinit. The same five-kilometer mark around Mayon is where vegetable farms and good pasture fields are located. Eruption pattern Since Tuesday, volcanologists said they observed a pattern in the volcano eruptions which occurred every four to five hours. Menya and about 19 farmers have observed the pattern too and they time their visits to their farms in the danger zone during those intervals. "As soon as the eruption ends, we will immediately go inside to feed our cattle and attend to our crops," said Menya. The farmers said they have not yet evacuated their cattle because there is no order from the local government. The presence of Menya inside the danger zone confirmed reports that many residents really go back to their homes despite the repeated warnings. Police and soliders have set up checkpoints and intercept residents and tourists from entering the danger zone. But it was observed that people still enter through barangays Mabinit and Buyuan because there are no checkpoints there. Authorities here said checkpoints are sometimes useless because local residents find other ways to go back. The sound of Mayon Volcanologist Paul Alanis explained that the rumbling sounds emanate from two sources –from the emission of gases and the spewing of rocks and boulders out of the crater. "The gas produces sound everytime it comes out of the crater. And since that crater is very big, the sound is amplified,” Alanis said.