The Pi­paro mud vol­cano has gone silent and re­gion­al di­rec­tor of the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness Er­ic Mack­ie be­lieves this si­lence has lulled res­i­dents in­to a false sense of se­cu­ri­ty.

Dur­ing a meet­ing held at the Pi­paro Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon, Mack­ie ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that af­ter ex­ten­sive train­ing not a sin­gle mem­ber of the Com­mu­ni­ty Emer­gency Re­sponse team showed up.

"We trained 11 peo­ple and not one of them is here. I am dis­ap­point­ed," Mack­ie told Guardian Me­dia. He said that de­spite the ab­sence of key com­mu­ni­ty per­son­nel, the ODPM and var­i­ous arms of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty were press­ing ahead to ham­mer out the fi­nal de­tails of the Emer­gency Re­sponse Con­tin­gency Plan.

He al­so said that they were try­ing to fi­nalise the pur­chase of four sirens to be placed at strate­gic points around the com­mu­ni­ty. This could be set up with­in a month if all goes well, he added.

He al­so said that the vol­cano will be mon­i­tored re­mote­ly so that there could be an ear­ly warn­ing if the vol­cano gets ac­tive. He said the ex­perts did not be­lieve that the vol­cano was sleep­ing but re­it­er­at­ed that ex­ces­sive rain­fall could trig­ger fur­ther ac­tiv­i­ty at the vol­cano.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, res­i­dents were giv­en sev­er­al sce­nar­ios and were asked to ex­plain what could be done in the event of these emer­gen­cies.

But res­i­dents ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment in the au­thor­i­ties.

 Jain­up Mo­hammed said the 20 tonnes of hot-mix promised by Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein nev­er ma­te­ri­alised. She said the roads were very de­plorable and they were con­cerned that if the vol­cano erupts, there will be dif­fi­cul­ties in get­ting out of the zones.

But Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment of­fi­cer of the ODPM An­war Baksh said that the plan was for res­i­dents to seek shel­ter with­in their com­mu­ni­ty and not nec­es­sar­i­ly leave the vil­lage if tragedy strikes.

Mack­ie ex­plained that in emer­gen­cies there was a term called "shel­ter in po­si­tion," which means that once an area is safe with­in the com­mu­ni­ty they could stay in that zone. he said they did not want res­i­dents to be­come vic­tims by try­ing to help a vic­tim who is in dis­tress. CERT per­son­nel and first re­sponse teams will be on hand to as­sist peo­ple in trou­ble, he added.

Res­i­dent Shaf­fick Mo­hammed said some res­i­dents would have eas­i­er ac­cess to as­sist res­i­dents who live near­by but Mack­ie warned that this could pose a haz­ard.

Baksh asked res­i­dents if they had pre­pared their "get-ready-to-go" bags and if they were fa­mil­iar with es­cape routes. They all said yes. Baksh said the de­tails gath­ered from the meet­ing will be utilised in the fi­nal­i­sa­tion of the emer­gency con­tin­gency plan.

On Sep­tem­ber 21, the vol­cano roared to life caus­ing mas­sive frac­tures and dam­ages to homes. Since then vol­canic fumes have been hiss­ing from the vol­cano's fis­sures while elec­tric­i­ty poles have been lean­ing pre­car­i­ous­ly. Af­ter two months of con­stant mon­i­tor­ing, the vol­cano went silent.

It last erupt­ed 22 years ago and ex­perts say it is due for an­oth­er erup­tion soon.