RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The rum­bling of the Pi­paro mud vol­cano has in­ten­si­fied.

Geo-sci­en­tists say more sub-sur­face ac­tiv­i­ty is tak­ing place, yet the Solomon fam­i­ly who lives clos­est to the vol­cano still has not re­lo­cat­ed.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, res­i­dent An­nal­isa Solomon said they spent the night at home be­cause con­di­tions were not favourable at the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre.

The fa­cil­i­ty has no bath­room and even­tu­al­ly af­ter vis­it­ing the cen­tre, the en­tire fam­i­ly moved back in­to their cracked house.

“We stayed awake all night on Sun­day. There is still some move­ment to the build­ing. Cracks are widen­ing,” she said with wor­ry.

How­ev­er, she said they were now con­tem­plat­ing split­ting up and stay­ing by sev­er­al fam­i­ly and friends.

“My par­ents will go some­where, my broth­er and his wife will go by their in-laws and I will have to go some­where else. It is re­al­ly dis­tress­ing split­ting up but we know we have to move,” she said.

Solomon begged the gov­ern­ment to pro­vide a tem­po­rary HDC home for them so they will not have to split up while they wait for the erup­tion.

Dur­ing the last erup­tion on Feb­ru­ary 22, 1997, the cracks and rum­bles oc­curred for more than a week be­fore the ac­tu­al erup­tion.

Solomon said since Sat­ur­day they have been pray­ing that their prop­er­ty will be saved. Their house has al­ready suf­fer­ing gap­ing cracks.

Mean­while, se­nior geo­sci­en­tist at Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration Xavier Moo­nan said the area con­tin­ues to show signs of an im­pend­ing erup­tion.

“There is a heav­i­ly-frac­tured area 40 feet north of the cur­rent ac­tive vent which has had a net up­lift of 1.2 feet when com­pared to pre­vi­ous drone topog­ra­phy sur­vey con­duct­ed in Au­gust 2019,” he said.

Moo­nan added: “The dex­tral mo­tion to the right along the frac­tures and deep­er faults are re­sult­ing in lo­calised up­lift and re­lease of trapped high­ly pres­sured gas­es and flu­ids (mud) in the sub­sur­face.

“If there is fur­ther mo­tion along the faults, cou­pled with the area be­com­ing more sat­u­rat­ed with rain­fall, the sub­sur­face pres­sures will in­crease and may breach lead­ing to a pos­si­ble erup­tion.”

He again warned ad­ven­tur­ers and tourists to stay away from the area.

“Be vig­i­lant and do not ven­ture on­to the Pi­paro mud vol­cano un­til au­thor­i­ties deem it safe enough to do so,” he said.

An­oth­er res­i­dent who went to the site said the ground feels as if it is bub­bling un­der­neath.

Oc­ca­sion­al­ly a puff of gas shoots out of the fis­sures which oozes fresh mud. More cracks have ap­peared on the road and sur­faces near the main vent.

De­spite the warn­ings, cu­ri­ous on­look­ers have con­tin­ued to go to the vol­cano site.

Dur­ing the last erup­tion, 31 fam­i­lies were dis­placed and sev­er­al homes were cov­ered in the mud which pitched more than 200 feet in the air.