Americans Head Home From Subic : Philippines: Some at crowded naval base fly out as volcanic eruptions continue. Blizzard of ash disrupts power.

The U.S. military has begun flying home hundreds of the 28,000 Americans now crowded into Subic Bay Naval Base, as a bizarre tropical blizzard of thick volcanic ash caused power failures across the base during a third day of increasingly violent eruptions of Mt. Pinatubo.

“It looks like it’s snowing outside,” said military spokeswoman Capt. Kim Urie. Headlights and street lamps were turned on at midafternoon Friday as a “dark, black cloud” passed over the giant Navy base and dropped a gritty rain of “mud drops,” she said.

She said there were no known injuries at Subic Bay, 21 miles southwest of the volcano. But the storm of volcanic ash caused power failures across the base, and Armed Forces Television warned residents to limit water use, close windows, turn off air conditioners, and stay off roads blanketed with up to three inches of ash. Gray ash also fell in Manila, 60 miles to the south.

“The ash is nontoxic,” said spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Mukri. “It’s just messy.”

Much more mess and misery is likely, however, from the season’s first typhoon, which hit the eastern coast of Luzon Island today with 80 m.p.h. winds. Typhoon Yunya had weakened to a tropical storm with 60 m.p.h. winds by the time it was centered about 70 miles east of the volcano. But the storm’s heavy rains drenched Manila and the provinces near the volcano.

In its worst day since major eruptions began Wednesday, the long-dormant volcano erupted at least five separate times Friday, spewing dark mushroom clouds of smoke and ash 20 miles into the air and sending deadly streams of super-hot gases and fiery rocks roaring down the volcano’s jagged slopes.

An eruption at 3:20 p.m. was the “biggest explosion so far,” said Delfin Garcia, a government geologist. But he said additional blasts are expected because continuing “harmonic tremors” and volcanic quakes indicate that magma is still moving under titanic pressure inside the 4,795-foot mountain.

“That means that the conduit is not clear,” said Kevin Rodolfo, an American geologist working with a joint U.S. Geological Survey team and Philippine volcanologists. “There is no open passage for the lava and that means a large eruption can still happen.”

Five more explosions shook the mountain early today.

On Friday, heavy rains all afternoon caused avalanches of sulfur-scented mud and car-sized boulders on the mountain, killing two people. In all, at least four people have died, four are missing and 24 have been injured since Wednesday, according to the Philippine civil defense office. Unofficial death tolls are higher.

The eruptions and mudflows sent thousands of people streaming into makeshift evacuation centers. Nearly 50,000 villagers have taken shelter in several dozen centers set up in local schools, government buildings and army barracks, civil defense officials said.

The 1,500 U.S. Air Force police, engineers and other “mission essential personnel” remaining at Clark Air Base, about nine miles east of the volcano, donned surgical masks and goggles and were repeatedly ordered into shelters during the eruptions Friday. About 14,635 Air Force personnel, dependents and Department of Defense employees were evacuated from Clark to Subic Bay on Monday.

A team of officials led by U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Platt planned to visit Clark today to assess damage from the eruptions. Southwest winds near the volcano shifted to the north, dropping more ash on the 130,000-acre base.

U.S. officials said the ash fall scuttled plans to use C-141 aircraft to fly Air Force families back to the United States from Cubi Point Naval Air Station on Friday. A Saudi Arabian Airlines 747 lost power in two engines Thursday while flying toward Manila. The plane landed safely, but inspectors found volcanic ash in the engines.

The Air Force has planned daily flights to accelerate departures for servicemen and their families due to be transferred from the Philippines in the next two months. A special flight carried 67 people to Travis Air Force Base in California on Thursday, and 300 people are due to leave today.

“We’re moving them out as fast as we can,” Urie said.

But Urie said the airlift was slowed by difficulties in tracking down hundreds of officers, airmen and their families scattered to dormitories, gymnasiums, hotel rooms, churches and other areas at Subic Bay. The evacuation literally doubled the base’s normal population of about 14,000.

“It’s taking us a while to get organized,” she said. “But we have to relieve the pressure here.”

Despite stepped-up police patrols at Clark, break-ins have doubled on the base since Wednesday, according to a U.S. Embassy official, including a reported ransacking of offices and supplies at the Crowe Valley aerial combat range.

“We all feel like we’re going to go home to an empty house,” said one Air Force officer who was evacuated to Subic Bay.

The U.S. Embassy said no munitions or weapons systems are endangered by the volcano. The embassy and Malacanang Palace denied local press reports, first published in the Guardian in London, that the United States had issued a “nuclear alert” at Clark.

In accordance with government policy, the United States will neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons in the Philippines. A Pentagon spokesman said Thursday that 3,300 tons of munitions are stored in earth-covered igloos at Clark.