RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Un­usu­al­ly in­tense mud­flows at the Dig­i­ty mud vol­cano in Debe are noth­ing to wor­ry about says geo­sci­en­tist Xavier Moo­nan as scores of peo­ple con­tin­ue to flock to the site to col­lect mud.

Moo­nan, who spe­cial­i­ties are Struc­tur­al Ge­ol­o­gy and Field Map­ping, spoke to Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive­ly af­ter tour­ing the vol­cano on Mon­day.

The creamy-look­ing grey­ish-white mud con­tin­ues to flow from the crater and two vents on the vol­cano's 20 feet cone.

Sit­u­at­ed off the Pic­ton Es­tate Road, the vol­cano juts out in­to the hori­zon amidst the agri­cul­tur­al es­tates of the Pic­ton Es­tate Road. Its clay is said to be over 11 mil­lion years old.

Moo­nan said, un­like all the oth­er vol­ca­noes in the coun­try, the Dig­i­ty vol­cano has the sin­gle largest cone that is known in all of Trinidad. It mea­sures over 20 feet above the ground and is 63 feet above sea lev­el.

De­scrib­ing the ac­tiv­i­ty as "a small mud­flow," Moo­nan said these ex­pul­sions oc­cur af­ter earth­quakes.

"It's not an erup­tion. It's typ­i­cal for mud vol­ca­noes. There is a buildup of pres­sure. The mud filled the crater and broke through the sides of the cone. It's noth­ing to be alarmed about," Moo­nan said.

He not­ed that earth­quakes some­times trig­gered move­ment along the fault. The last earth­quake oc­curred a week ago when the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre (UWI-SRC) record­ed a 4.3 earth­quake near the cap­i­tal.

"We had some earth­quakes re­cent­ly and this is what tends to hap­pen. Af­ter some of these earth­quakes, a du­ra­tion pass­es and the pres­sures be­gin build­ing up and you get small flows oc­cur­ring a lit­tle more in­tense­ly than nor­mal. When an earth­quake oc­curs, faults move and over time you get a flow com­ing out from it."

He said this hap­pened back in 2018 when the 6.9 mag­ni­tude earth­quake rocked T&T for al­most two min­utes, trig­ger­ing the move­ment of a ma­jor fault in Los Iros.

"The move­ment al­lowed flu­ids and mud to come up be­fore giv­ing birth to sev­en dif­fer­ent vents oc­cur­ring along the fault it­self," Moo­nan added.

He said there is cur­rent­ly no un­usu­al ac­tiv­i­ty at Dev­il's Wood­yard or Pi­paro vol­ca­noes.

Sev­er­al peo­ple were seen com­ing to the vol­cano to col­lect mud.

Cindy See­ta­hal said she had some skin prob­lems and was told the mud was good as a fa­cial.

"My friend told me this is ex­cel­lent for my face be­cause it clos­es up your pores and I'm hop­ing it works. I've been here and it's the first time I'm see­ing it with the mud com­ing up," See­ta­hal said.

Guardian Me­dia will bring you more on this sto­ry in the CNC3 7 pm News­cast.