Pres­i­dent of the Pi­paro Vil­lage Coun­cil Ryan Ghan­ny is call­ing for an emer­gency re­sponse team, in­clu­sive of army/po­lice per­son­nel, to be set up in the com­mu­ni­ty in the like­ly event that the mud vol­cano erupts.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view on Sat­ur­day, Ghan­ny lament­ed that not enough was be­ing done to pre­pare the com­mu­ni­ty. “We have plen­ty is­sues, we not pre­pared,” said Ghan­ny. He com­plained that there are no clear guide­lines, no re­sources, in­clud­ing equip­ment, sup­plies and in­fra­struc­ture, in place to en­sure a speedy and safe evac­u­a­tion and ef­fi­cient re­sponse by the rel­e­vant agen­cies.

Not­ing that to date an evac­u­a­tion route has not been mapped out, Ghan­ny said apart from the im­me­di­ate area be­ing cor­doned off, no warn­ing sig­nage has been erect­ed. “We need se­cu­ri­ty to man the area. I think they should have an in­ci­dent com­mand post in the area, they could use the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre to house se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers with ve­hi­cles, and the army. We need a lit­tle more struc­ture and sup­port. Even the vil­lagers need to pre­pare them­selves.”

He was not sat­is­fied that the vol­cano was be­ing prop­er­ly mon­i­tored dai­ly. Com­plain­ing that the com­mu­ni­ty al­so needs street lights, he said, “This (vol­cano) is not go­ing to tell us when it is go­ing to erupt.”

Re­call­ing the ma­jor erup­tion in Feb­ru­ary 1997 that dis­placed 31 fam­i­lies, buried cars and roads in mud, he said, “In 1997 eo­ple had to run for their lives. We need more than what is hap­pen­ing now.” On Fri­day night a meet­ing with Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath, Cou­va Tabaquite Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Hen­ry Awong, Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment head Rod­ney Smart and oth­er stake­hold­ers was held with res­i­dents to dis­cuss evac­u­a­tion routes, shel­ters, etc.

Aris­ing out of the meet­ing, Ghan­ny said the cor­po­ra­tion’s dis­as­ter and man­age­ment unit held a train­ing ses­sion with vil­lagers at the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre. Two Sat­ur­day’s ago the vol­cano be­gan show­ing signs of in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty, re­sult­ing in struc­tur­al dam­age to one house, large cracks on the roads and the perime­ter of the vol­cano. Res­i­dents re­port­ed rum­bling sounds and a sul­phur odour em­a­nat­ing from the vol­cano, as well as, feel­ing the ground vi­bra­tions. Ex­perts have de­scribed the vol­cano as a tick­ing time bomb, but their warn­ings to the pub­lic to de­sist from vis­it­ing the site have been ig­nored. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is­sued a sim­i­lar warn­ing. He al­so gave the as­sur­ance the sit­u­a­tion is be­ing close­ly mon­i­tored and emer­gency/pro­tec­tive arms are ready should the vol­cano erupts.

Dis­as­ter ex­perts ad­vise res­i­dents of emer­gency plan—ODPM

Mean­while, a re­lease from the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) on Sat­ur­day said a team of dis­as­ter of­fi­cials met with res­i­dents of Pi­paro on Fri­day evening to ad­vise of an evac­u­a­tion plan in the event of an erup­tion.

In a re­lease said the ODPM's CEO Ma­jor Gen­er­al Rod­ney Smart along with the Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Ray­mond Seep­aul, led a team of dis­as­ter man­agers to Pi­paro to meet res­i­dents and up­date them on an emer­gency re­sponse and evac­u­a­tion plan for the area.

Of­fi­cials said it was done to im­prove the com­mu­ni­ty’s re­sponse ca­pa­bil­i­ty.

They said res­i­dents were urged to de­vel­op a fam­i­ly evac­u­a­tion plan aligned to the com­mu­ni­ty evac­u­a­tion plan.

Dis­cus­sions were al­so held on de­vel­op­ing com­mu­ni­ty alert mech­a­nisms such as us­ing the com­mu­ni­ty Masjid’s bell, ve­hi­cle horns and lo­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion groups, the re­lease stat­ed.

They said the res­i­dents were al­so ad­vised to form a Com­mu­ni­ty Emer­gency Re­sponse Team (CERT).

The re­lease said a CERT was es­tab­lished at the Princes Town Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Sat­ur­day, along with the strength­en­ing of the evac­u­a­tion plan based on lo­cal knowl­edge of the area.

Res­i­dents were to al­so pro­vide fur­ther in­put in­to the strat­e­gy for the evac­u­a­tion of vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple with­in the com­mu­ni­ty in the event of a dis­as­ter.

Smart claimed the com­bined ef­forts of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and all oth­er state agen­cies would re­sult in the im­prove­ment of the over­all re­sponse and re­silience of the Pi­paro Com­mu­ni­ty.