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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Massive land movements in Los Iros damage roads, destroy farmlands

by

16 days ago
20250630

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Mas­sive land move­ment in Los Iros has caused gap­ing cracks, se­vere road dam­age and de­struc­tion of agri­cul­tur­al lands leav­ing 35 farm­ers cut off from their gar­dens and putting their liveli­hoods in jeop­ardy.

Ex­perts who vis­it­ed the area off Roy­al En­gi­neer­ing Road, com­mon­ly called R Road, yes­ter­day warned that the sit­u­a­tion could get worse as the un­sta­ble ground con­tin­ues to shift and cracks are widen­ing due to fault line move­ment.

Ac­cess to the pop­u­lar mud vol­cano site has al­so been cut off as ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic is im­pos­si­ble and en­try in­to the com­mu­ni­ty has be­come dan­ger­ous.

Farm­ers woke up on Fri­day morn­ing to the dev­as­ta­tion. Sev­en years ago, they had a sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ence af­ter a ma­jor earth­quake caused sig­nif­i­cant dam­age, but they said this is worse as their ponds have been de­stroyed, fur­ther sat­u­rat­ing the land amid heavy rain­fall. Some pack­ing hous­es were al­so de­stroyed.

“The more you walk­ing go­ing, is the more you see­ing land slip­ping and go­ing down. Now if you walk­ing and you now watch­ing where you putting your foot, you can break your foot. It have some places about 15 feet depth the land open,” said Ish­war Bho­lai who cul­ti­vates toma­toes, hot pep­pers and pi­men­to.

Bho­lai said he plant­ed more than 18,700 plants but now has no ac­cess to his land.

“The cracks gone through my toma­to field,” he said.

Bho­lai be­lieves the earth move­ment was caused by oil ex­plo­ration sev­er­al years ago when ex­plo­sives were used.

An­oth­er farmer, Kishore Ra­goo­bar, said, “The dis­tance where I have to tote is re­al far, up, down. How the land move you have to go up and down. It ter­ri­ble.”

Ra­goo­bar, who cul­ti­vates toma­toes, bo­di, hot pep­per and baigan, said on Sat­ur­day he paid some­one $200 to car­ry one bag of baigan.

He said two of his ponds were de­stroyed and some crops were lost to up­root­ed trees.

“This is a re­al dis­as­ter,” lament­ed Sunil Bals­ingh, who has been farm­ing in the area along with his broth­er, for 40 years.

“I lost a field of baigan be­cause the earth shake-up, 500-600 in length and in width about four feet. The land buss in two and I had a big pond and a small pond mash up.”

Bals­ingh said a near­by swamp was al­so de­stroyed.

An­oth­er farmer, Naresh “Nob­by” Mathu­ra, is al­so count­ing his loss­es.

“My trac­tor and my equip­ment where the land burst every­thing gone down in the crack,” he said.

Mathu­ra said he wants to be re­lo­cat­ed as it’s a re­cur­ring prob­lem.

Se­nior Ge­ol­o­gist Xavier Moo­nan and Gavin El­s­ley, Se­nior Geo­physi­cist at Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration, vis­it­ed the site yes­ter­day. El­s­ley said there were huge move­ments along the fault lines, and one part of the road had bro­ken off com­plete­ly and shift­ed more than 50 feet away.

“I’ve nev­er seen any­thing like that be­fore,” he added.

Moo­nan re­called that in 2018, an earth­quake caused the fault line to move he be­lieves it hap­pened again but is now the dam­age is more se­vere.

With re­cent heavy rain­fall adding to the land’s sat­u­ra­tion, he said, “The faults have opened up and al­low­ing a lot of that wa­ter, cre­at­ing a slid­ing sur­face to al­low pret­ty more slip­page to oc­cur. It is like­ly this is go­ing to get worse.”

He added that the move­ment of the faults is caus­ing the slip­page, not the mud vol­ca­noes.

Act­ing Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Sad­dam Ho­sein and La Brea MP Clyde El­der trekked through the mud and bush­es to vis­it the af­fect­ed area yes­ter­day and promised to as­sist the farm­ers.


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