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Friday, July 11, 2025

Seismologist: Recent earthquakes may be linked

by

2704 days ago
20180214

Seis­mol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre, Dr Joan Lutch­man, says re­cent earth­quakes could have con­tributed to the erup­tion of the Dev­il’s Wood­yard mud vol­cano, which had stayed dor­mant for 22 years be­fore yes­ter­day’s erup­tions.

In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Lutch­man said the seis­mic team vis­it­ed the site in Hin­dus­tan to do more re­search. How­ev­er, she said the UWI Ge­o­log­i­cal Unit was the au­thor­i­ty to make pro­nounce­ments on the vol­cano.

Asked whether the re­cent earth­quakes to hit T&T had spurred on the vol­canic ac­tiv­i­ty, Lutch­man said this was a pos­si­bil­i­ty, as tec­ton­ic ac­tiv­i­ty can af­fect vol­ca­noes.

“Earth­quakes and vol­canic ac­tiv­i­ty are in­deed con­nect­ed. In this case it is a pos­si­bil­i­ty, but more re­search has to be done be­cause we have not had a lot of these phe­nom­e­nons to make a de­tailed pro­nounce­ment,” Lutch­man said.

Mem­bers of the Ge­o­log­i­cal Unit stayed at the vol­canic site for sev­er­al hours yes­ter­day. Up to late last evening there were no more erup­tions, but res­i­dents said they had al­ready packed bags in case they need­ed to make a quick ex­it.

The vol­cano first erupt­ed in 1852, shak­ing the en­tire vil­lage and felling tall trees. Vil­lagers at the time be­lieved that the Dev­il had come from be­neath the earth to fell the woods and this was how the area be­came known as Dev­il’s Wood­yard.

In 1993, it was adopt­ed as a recre­ation­al site by the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, but two years lat­er, in 1995, it erupt­ed again, caus­ing sul­phuric dirt to cov­er the pic­nic sheds. The site be­came run down over the years but was again up­grad­ed.

No fa­cil­i­ties were de­stroyed in the lat­est erup­tion, which res­i­dents say was worse than the one in 1995. The site con­tin­ues to bring in rev­enue for the cor­po­ra­tion, as it is rent­ed to church­es and oth­er groups for recre­ation.

Ac­cord­ing to the earth­quake track­er web­site https://earth­quake­track.com/p/trinidad-and-to­ba­go/re­cent, T&T has ex­pe­ri­enced sev­en earth­quakes in the last 30 days. The last oc­curred two days ago, a 4.2 mag­ni­tude quake at a 50 km depth. Eigh­teen days ago, an­oth­er 4.9 mag­ni­tude earth­quake oc­curred in the Point Fortin re­gion at a 32 km depth.


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