Hundreds of residents have forced to evacuate their homes after a surprise eruption from a dormant volcano, carpeting the village below with dust and ash. A dormant volcano on Kadovar Island, northeast of Papua New Guinea, has erupted for the first time in known history, with a large plume of ash rising 2.1km above sea level, forcing the evacuation of over 500 residents. A mass evacuation was ordered amid fears the eruption may become explosive, bringing a risk of tsunamis and landslides, the Rabaul Volcanological Observatory (RVO) told Loop PNG. Wewak District Administrator Ricky Wobar said the situation on the island had “worsened” after flying overhead “to assess the situation on the island, where they observed lava coming out of the once dormant volcano”. The RVO warned: "Due to the steepness of the island, landslides are possible and together with the explosive nature of the magma, tsunamis may be generated,' a report read. The ash clouds have formed a plume that is travelling west-northwest Cheyne O'Brien, a forecaster at the Darwin Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre said today, adding: "It's just a continuous emission of volcanic ash at the moment." “The reports we have is that all of the residents of the island have been evacuated and that there has not been any loss of life,” the NGO wrote on Facebook late Saturday. The volcano, on Kadovar Island northeast of Papua New Guinea, lay dormant until January 5 when it began to erupt at around noon, local media reports. Experts are racing to uncover the cause of the unexpected eruption as lava continues to spew from the volcano, covering more than 50 per cent of the land. There are no confirmed records of a previous eruption of Kadovar, said Chris Firth, a vulcanologist at Macquarie University, but scientists speculate it could have been one of two "burning islands" mentioned in the journals of a 17th-century English pirate and maritime adventurer, William 

 Dampier. Dampier may have recorded the last eruption of Kadovar during a voyage in search of "Terra Australis", the southern Vulcanologists are interested to observe its behaviour now, Firth added.
All residents are evacuated, 500 of them to the nearby island of Blup Blup, while the once-dormant Kadovar volcano in the Schouten Islands, Papua New Guinea, erupts for the first known time, sending an ash cloud 2.1 kilometres (1.3 mi) above sea level.