Gov­ern­ment which has sought sci­en­tif­ic as­sess­ment on the Pi­paro mud vol­cano will say what “has to be said” on the suit­abil­i­ty of the area for res­i­den­cy af­ter get­ting the sci­en­tif­ic in­for­ma­tion.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young in­di­cat­ed this at yes­ter­day’s post-cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing. He was asked whether peo­ple should be halt­ed from liv­ing in the area where the cur­rent vol­canic ac­tiv­i­ty is lo­cat­ed.

The Pi­paro vol­cano had erupt­ed in 1997 spew­ing mud ex­treme­ly high in­to the air. Video from that time showed on­look­ers flee­ing in fear with tow­er­ing erup­tions of mud be­ing tossed in­to the air be­hind them. Ac­tiv­i­ty, to a much less­er ex­tent, al­so oc­curred in 2011 and last week­end the vol­cano start­ed “act­ing up” again, but hasn’t erupt­ed.

Yes­ter­day Young, Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein spoke about the cur­rent south­ern vol­canic ac­tiv­i­ty and re­cent north­ern flood­ing. Young said cli­mate change and glob­al warm­ing are re­al as he’d not­ed high­er tides than usu­al. Ho­sein left dur­ing the brief­ing to at­tend a meet­ing in Pi­paro re­gard­ing the vol­cano.

Young, who deemed it, “seis­mic ac­tiv­i­ty”, added last week­end’s de­vel­op­ment wasn’t a mas­sive erup­tion. He said one house was af­fect­ed and im­me­di­ate­ly po­lice and fire of­fi­cers were at the area and evac­u­at­ed the fam­i­ly and cor­doned off the area.

Young who said there was noth­ing a Gov­ern­ment could do to stop a vol­cano from bub­bling up, called for peo­ple to ex­er­cise cau­tion near the vol­cano, “There can be dan­ger in go­ing there. The sci­en­tists and au­thor­i­ties have said to stay away from the site. Pi­paro res­i­dents know not to go near where this ac­tiv­i­ty is oc­cur­ring in case there’s an erup­tion.”

How­ev­er, he said peo­ple from all over TT were go­ing there and “mak­ing it a scene”.

Young ap­pealed for peo­ple to avoid the area since if some­thing “hap­pened “ and there was a mas­sive erup­tion and peo­ple were in­jured, they’d be re­spon­si­ble for their sit­u­a­tion.

Young al­so said some of the cov­er­age and “noise” on the is­sue re­mind­ed him of the adage that “emp­ty bar­rels (sic) make the most noise “.

He said Op­po­si­tion politi­cians are mak­ing a lot of un­nec­es­sary noise about the is­sue, adding that most are un­true.

When last week­end’s ac­tiv­i­ty be­gan, he said he’d called for sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis to be done and that had tak­en place. A pri­vate en­ti­ty Touch­stone was as­sist­ing and UWI’s Seis­mic and Vol­canol­o­gy units were al­so no­ti­fied.

“So it was wrong to say Gov­ern­ment didn’t have the sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis and wrong to say it was left to the po­lice. They were do­ing their part along with the Fire Ser­vices. Gov­ern­ment has been mon­i­tor­ing this from the word ‘Go’. Min­is­ter Ho­sein was on the ground, the ODPM is in charge and we’re deal­ing with Pi­paro. It’s the emp­ty bar­rels (sic) mak­ing the most noise to sug­gest that Gov­ern­ment isn’t aware and not in charge of the sit­u­a­tion.”