RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Geo­sci­en­tist and Ex­plo­ration Man­ag­er Xavier Moo­nan, who has con­duct­ed ex­ten­sive re­search on the Pi­paro mud vol­cano, is cau­tion­ing cit­i­zens against ven­tur­ing near the site due to in­creased pres­sure build­ing at the vol­cano's vents and fis­sures.

Moo­nan, who vis­it­ed the vol­cano on Thurs­day, stat­ed that there is ex­ces­sive gas be­ing emit­ted from the vol­cano in force­ful blasts, in­di­cat­ing the ne­ces­si­ty for au­thor­i­ties to cor­don off the vol­cano.

 "We are wit­ness­ing a re­lease of pres­sure that has built up since ac­tiv­i­ty in 2019. Some of the frac­tures seen now were not present last night. Some are ex­pand­ing next to the vol­cano and the area is lo­cal­ly sub­sid­ing," he ex­plained, not­ing, "This sug­gests pres­sure is be­ing re­leased, and re­leased quick­ly."

Ob­serv­ing puffs of gas and splash­es of mud em­a­nat­ing from the vol­cano's main vent as high as 20 feet in­to the air, Moo­nan em­pha­sised, "It’s no­tice­able the amount of gas be­ing emit­ted, and this ex­ceeds nor­mal lev­els. My rec­om­men­da­tion is to please stay away from the vol­cano. You can ob­serve and hear it from a dis­tance."

High­light­ing the safe­ty risks, Moo­nan added, "The area needs to be cor­doned off un­til the ac­tiv­i­ty sub­sides. This is nat­ur­al gas, with some H2S (Hy­dro­gen sul­phide) with­in it. Nat­ur­al gas is flam­ma­ble, so we don’t want peo­ple around here trig­ger­ing any ex­plo­sions."

Mean­while, the head of the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness Rod­ney Smart en­dorsed Moo­nan's rec­om­men­da­tion for the pop­u­la­tion to stay away.

 "We are col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment, and their per­son­nel are on-site con­duct­ing as­sess­ments," Smart said.

He as­sured that res­i­dents are pre­pared for any po­ten­tial evac­u­a­tion. 

"We con­duct­ed an evac­u­a­tion ex­er­cise in the com­mu­ni­ty, en­sur­ing they are equipped and trained. We de­vel­oped an evac­u­a­tion plan and ex­e­cut­ed it," Smart af­firmed, urg­ing the pub­lic not to pan­ic and as­sur­ing them of on­go­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the me­dia to keep the com­mu­ni­ty in­formed.

On Feb­ru­ary 23rd, 1997, the erup­tion of the Pi­paro mud vol­cano was de­clared a dis­as­ter as a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of Pi­paro was cov­ered with vol­canic mud and mud flur­ries. A to­tal of 108 peo­ple were left home­less. In 2019, the vol­cano again start­ed show­ing signs of ac­tiv­i­ty fol­low­ing which an Emer­gency Re­sponse Con­tin­gency Plan was ham­mered out with res­i­dents.