As the cracks con­tin­ue to ap­pear, evac­u­a­tion plans have been pre­pared for Pi­paro res­i­dents should the mud vol­cano blow.

Five days af­ter the Pi­paro vol­cano rum­bled to life, the res­i­dents still have not been evac­u­at­ed.

How­ev­er, the au­thor­i­ties have de­vel­oped an emer­gency evac­u­a­tion route di­rect­ing res­i­dents which way to run if the vol­cano blows.

Dur­ing a mul­ti-min­is­te­r­i­al meet­ing with res­i­dents yes­ter­day, all res­i­dents liv­ing to the west of the vol­cano were ad­vised to pro­ceed along Pi­paro Road through Guaracara Junc­tion and gath­er at Rivers­dale Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School in the event of an erup­tion.

Those liv­ing to the east of the vol­cano were ad­vised to pro­ceed along Pi­paro Road to the Pi­paro Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre.

Maps were dis­trib­uted to res­i­dents mak­ing it easy for a quick ex­it.

One fam­i­ly liv­ing close to the vol­cano’s main vent who could go nei­ther east or west was ad­vised to go to an area through the woods to get on­to Pi­paro Road.

But res­i­dent Bal­dath Ram­nar­ine com­plained that the roads (Ho­sei­nee Trace, San­cho Road, Nivet Road and Stone Road) around the vol­cano were so de­plorable that get­ting in and out would be treach­er­ous.

Chair­man of Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Gowrie Roop­nar­ine said they were on tick­ing time bomb and they des­per­ate­ly need­ed 20 tonnes of hot mix as­phalt to fix Ho­sei­nee Trace and oth­er roads lead­ing to the dis­as­ter zone. A bridge had col­lapsed at Ho­sei­nee Trace mak­ing the area im­pass­able and the Cor­po­ra­tion is in the process of fix­ing it.

“If the Min­istry of Works can give us this ma­te­r­i­al we will pro­vide the labour and fix the road so that in the event of an erup­tion, we will be able to ex­it quick­ly,” he said.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the ODPM, Ma­jor Gen­er­al Rod­ney Smart called for vol­un­teers to be trained by the T&T Fire Ser­vices so they can be­come part of the Com­mu­ni­ty Emer­gency Re­sponse Team (CERT). Four peo­ple vol­un­teered.

Smart said they were map­ping the area and based on ad­vice from Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration se­nior geo­sci­en­tist Xavier Moo­nan, a .9 kilo­me­tre zone and a .5 kilo­me­tre buffer zone were iden­ti­fied for evac­u­a­tion.

“This plan is a work in progress. Let us find vi­able routes and go to the des­ig­nat­ed shel­ters in the event of an emer­gency,” he said.

Act­ing Chief Fire Of­fi­cer (South) Clu­nis Wallen called on res­i­dents to de­vel­op an alarm sys­tem that will alert all res­i­dents when the emer­gency oc­curs.

How­ev­er, res­i­dent Shamshadeen Ho­sein said they al­ready start­ed a What­sapp group among them­selves to share in­for­ma­tion quick­ly. He ques­tioned how soon the vol­cano will blow.

Moo­nan said based in sur­veys done, the fis­sures were widen­ing.

“There are nu­mer­ous frac­tures not at the cur­rent vent. Our team from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies ob­served blasts every 30 sec­onds and the ground was shak­ing and small amounts of mud were be­ing shot up in the air on Sun­day. This is not the norm. There has been no earth­quake or seis­mic ac­tiv­i­ty and this is an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent scale of ac­tiv­i­ty hap­pen­ing here,” Moo­nan said.

He not­ed that a tilt me­tre was need­ed to mon­i­tor the site which will wire­less­ly send sig­nals back to the UWI base for analy­sis.

If this type of equip­ment was avail­able, Moo­nan said they will be able to make a more ac­cu­rate pre­dic­tion of the im­pend­ing erup­tion.

An­oth­er res­i­dent said they were con­cerned that all the elec­tri­cal poles were lean­ing and if the lines col­lapsed dur­ing an erup­tion, they will be trapped.

Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Kaz­im Ho­sein who at­tend­ed the com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing af­ter the sit­ting of the Sen­ate, im­me­di­ate­ly spoke with TTEC’s gen­er­al man­ag­er Kevin Ram­sook about the lean­ing elec­tri­cal lines. Ho­sein al­so spoke with Min­is­ter of Works Ro­han Sinanan.

Ho­sein lat­er as­sured the res­i­dents that the 20 tonnes of the hot mix will be pro­vid­ed to fix the roads. He promised to speak to his col­leagues in the Min­istry of Hous­ing to de­ter­mine whether ac­com­mo­da­tion could be pro­vid­ed to the Solomon fam­i­ly, whose home has been se­vere­ly dam­aged by cracks. That fam­i­ly has been forced to leave their home.

How­ev­er, Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath called for ac­com­mo­da­tion to be pro­vid­ed to all the af­fect­ed res­i­dents.

The vol­cano was very qui­et yes­ter­day and of­fi­cials re­it­er­at­ed that de­spite this fa­cade of peace, all res­i­dents and cit­i­zens should re­frain from en­ter­ing the site as it pos­es a dan­ger.