mud volcano
© Chen Yu-i
A mud volcano erupted near a local temple in Wandan Township in Pingtung County on Friday morning, heaving large amounts of mud above ground that flowed into surrounding roads and fields.

The eruption, the second by the volcano since October 2021, occurred at around 6 a.m. near Huang Yuan Sheng Tien (皇源聖殿), a temple surrounded by farmland in Wannei Village in the eastern part of the county near Kaohsiung.

The bursts reached as high as a one-story building, and to keep the mud from further spreading into nearby rice paddies, excavators were mobilized to channel mud toward drainage ditches, Wannei Village chief Chen Yu-i (陳玉意) told CNA.



Normally a fire would be lit to accelerate the release of natural gas, but because this eruption occurred close to the temple, the village decided to let the gas release on its own without igniting a fire, Chen said.

The Wandan mud volcano usually erupts one to three times a year, with the eruptions mostly occurring in Wannei or other nearby villages.

About 90 minutes after the mud volcano erupted, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake shook the county, and some wondered if the two natural phenomenons were connected.

Central Weather Bureau Seismological Center Director Chen Kuo-chang (陳國昌) said the two events were unrelated because they occurred far from each other and were triggered by different reasons.

Chen said the earthquake was centered in waters 30 kilometers off the coast of Eluanbi, Taiwan's southernmost point, at a point more than 100 kilometers from Wannei, and occurred because of the subsidence and compression of tectonic plates near the Pingtung submarine ridge.

The mud volcano event, he said, was a relatively shallow geological event resulting from natural gas flowing through underground crevices and reacting chemically with groundwater and rocks to form the boiling mud, and was not related to the seismic events over 100 km away, Chen said.