SASCHA WIL­SON

The quiet­ness of the Pi­paro mud vol­cano could be the calm be­fore the storm as was ex­pe­ri­enced in 1997 when there was a three week lull be­fore the erup­tion.

Speak­ing at the site yes­ter­day, se­nior geo­sci­en­tist with Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration and UWI lec­tur­er, Xavier Moo­nan, asked vil­lagers to con­tin­ue to be vig­i­lant.

“These sort of ex­pres­sions are what ac­tu­al­ly ties every well to the erup­tion we had back in 1997. There was a lull pe­ri­od of about three weeks and so that’s why we are pay­ing at­ten­tion to this time pe­ri­od to see if this is con­tin­u­ing to match that. The most we can do with­out any fur­ther sci­en­tif­ic da­ta is just to see if it con­tin­ues to match that and then we will know whether we are ex­pect­ing a ma­jor erup­tion or if it is go­ing to go back to slum­ber again.”

How­ev­er, he said the ex­ist­ing cracks on the ground were wider, there were new cracks and “a fair amount of gas” was bub­bling from the main vent and small­er vents.

Moo­nan was part of a team from the Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies De­part­ment of Pe­tro­le­um Geo­science that con­duct­ed a seis­mic to­mog­ra­phy 2D sur­vey at the vol­cano site yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, Moo­nan said up­dat­ed and so­phis­ti­cat­ed equip­ment is need­ed to mon­i­tor the vol­cano more ac­cu­rate­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly.

He re­called that they made a pro­pos­al for new equip­ment to Gov­ern­ment af­ter the mud vol­cano at the Dev­il’s Wood­yard in New Grant erupt­ed last year.

He said, “One of the equip­ment that we have rec­om­mend­ed that we are try­ing to get is the wire­less tilt­meters.”

Once in­stalled on the site, he said those me­ters will be able to broad­cast to them no mat­ter where they are in the coun­try re­al time in­for­ma­tion from the vol­cano.

He said there were al­so much bet­ter ver­sions of the equip­ment they cur­rent­ly use at UWI which will al­low them to cap­ture date much faster.

He not­ed that the vol­cano site will first have to be prop­er­ly se­cured and mon­i­tored to pre­vent the equip­ment from be­ing van­dalised.

Moo­nan said the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny al­so con­duct­ed tests and de­ter­mined that the sul­phur scents were not con­cen­trat­ed enough to be harm­ful to the res­i­dents.

He said the da­ta from yes­ter­day’s sur­vey will be com­pared to pre­vi­ous da­ta cap­tured pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly over the past few years to de­ter­mine the lev­el of un­der­ground ac­tiv­i­ty tak­ing place.

The re­sults are ex­pect­ed with­in 24 hours. Even if the vol­cano erupts, Moo­nan said the mud flow is not ex­pect­ed to go be­yond the pre­vi­ous area that was cov­ered.

While res­i­dents’ hous­es may not be cov­ered with mud, he said the hous­es will like­ly sus­tain struc­tur­al dam­age.

UWI geo­physi­cist Dr Os­haine Blake, who was at the site from 6 am, said had done sur­veys at the site since 2014.

He said, “It is quite ex­cit­ing be­cause we are see­ing mi­ni erup­tion and from this we will be able to tell if the vol­cano is ac­tu­al­ly spread­ing.”

Pri­or to the erup­tion two Sat­ur­day’s ago, he said their da­ta showed there were no changes in ac­tiv­i­ty at the vol­cano. He said the in­for­ma­tion from the da­ta will be made avail­able to the au­thor­i­ties and the res­i­dents.