RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Al­though the Pi­paro mud vol­cano seems ready to blow, most res­i­dents have re­fused to evac­u­ate. Torn be­tween the threat of the im­pend­ing erup­tion and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of floods as­so­ci­at­ed with Trop­i­cal Storm Karen, res­i­dents opt­ed to stay in their homes.

The Pi­paro Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre was iden­ti­fied as an emer­gency shel­ter and de­spite tor­ren­tial rains, mem­bers of the Cou­va/ Tabaquite/ Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC) were out ad­vis­ing res­i­dents to evac­u­ate. How­ev­er, most res­i­dents ig­nored the warn­ing and in­stead packed their cars with emer­gency food sup­plies, cloth­ing, med­i­cine and im­por­tant doc­u­ments in case they had to make a hasty re­treat.

One res­i­dent, Han­ifha Karim, who lives about half a mile from the vol­cano, said her fam­i­ly was on stand­by and ready to move if nec­es­sary. She said she was ter­ri­fied that the vol­cano will erupt and cov­er part of the vil­lage as it did on Feb­ru­ary 22, 1997, but is al­so con­cerned about the storm and whether leav­ing home will bring greater prob­lems.

"We just wait­ing to see what is hap­pen­ing. We re­al­ly scared now, " she said.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, An­nal­isa Solomon, said her fam­i­ly will seek refuge at the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre.

"We have been speak­ing to the coun­cil­lor and we have al­ready packed up our stuff to go to the shel­ter," she said.

CT­TRC chair­man Hen­ry Awong said up to 2 pm on­ly the Solomon fam­i­ly had agreed to evac­u­ate. He said teams have been work­ing with the vil­lagers to pre­pare for any even­tu­al­i­ty.

Mean­while, se­nior sci­en­tist from Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration, Xavier Moo­nan, called on the gov­ern­ment to bar­ri­cade the area. He said drone sur­veys of the vol­cano's crater and fis­sures show that it is about to blow.

Moo­nan and his team toured the vol­cano on Sun­day morn­ing, hours af­ter res­i­dents re­port­ed see­ing fis­sures and cracks around the area.

"We should ad­vise peo­ple to not ven­ture on­to it at least. It looks like it may blow very soon. We are see­ing up to two feet of mo­tion on some frac­tures," Moo­nan said.

In May, the geo­sci­en­tist re­port­ed in­ter­est­ing changes on the sur­face and sub­sur­face of the vol­canic vents which erupt­ed on Feb­ru­ary 22, 1997, dis­plac­ing 31 fam­i­lies and killing live­stock and birds. Dur­ing that erup­tion, thick warm liq­uid mud spewed up to 200 feet in­to the air. The ex­panse of vol­canic dirt cov­ered an area of 2.5 km.