Kevon Felmine

Res­i­dents of Pi­paro are liv­ing on the edge as the mud vol­cano that rav­aged the vil­lage 14 years ago, has be­gun to threat­en their com­mu­ni­ty again. Res­i­dents are sub­ject­ed to sleep­less nights as they are haunt­ed with mem­o­ries of Feb­ru­ary 22, 1997, when steam­ing mud crushed hous­es and swept away cars, live­stock and all else in its path. When the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed the site off Old Pi­paro Road yes­ter­day, two new mounds had sur­faced, spew­ing mud sev­er­al feet in­to the air at five minute in­ter­vals. At the scene was Sham­ma­rine Kissoon­dath, 56, who lives near­by. He said he came to see what was hap­pen­ing as he had been kept awake by strange sounds is­su­ing from the vol­cano.

He said: "It sound­ed like gun­shots and this morn­ing when I awoke it was still mak­ing noise. This is the same sound it made be­fore it erupt­ed in 1997. It is pos­si­ble that we can have a re­peat and maybe this time it could be worse." He said it on­ly took ten min­utes on that fate­ful day for the mas­sive amount of mud spew­ing from the vol­cano to wreak hav­oc. Boyie Suratt, who lives about 300 feet from the vol­cano said he, too, has been sleep­ing rest­less­ly since Thurs­day. Suratt's home is near­est the vol­cano and he said while he does not be­lieve that it will erupt any time soon, no one can pre­dict when and how se­vere an­oth­er erup­tion might be.

"I was home in my gallery around 3 am on Thurs­day and I heard this sound like peo­ple burst­ing bam­boo. We usu­al­ly get a lit­tle noise now and then, es­pe­cial­ly when it rains be­cause gas is try­ing to es­cape. But now the noise has been com­ing fre­quent­ly like it have plen­ty gas down there." He ex­plained that the rain soft­ens the mud which caus­es mi­nor ex­plo­sions. How­ev­er, he ad­mits that over the past few days the noise lev­els had in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly oc­cur­ring at an alarm­ing rate. He, too, re­called the dra­ma that un­fold­ed in 1997, say­ing that a wave of mud sev­er­al feet high was crum­bling any house in its path. Suratt said his home was saved as an­oth­er house that crum­bled was able to forge a bar­ri­er in front of his. He said on Feb­ru­ary 22, 1997, he awoke to mud spew­ing some 200 feet in­to the air.