Six new mud vol­ca­noes have ap­peared along RE Road in Los Iros, South Trinidad and farm­ers are now call­ing for im­me­di­ate re­lo­ca­tion.

The area had been dev­as­tat­ed by the 6.9 mag­ni­tude earth­quake which rocked T&T and the East­ern Caribbean in Au­gust 2018.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, farmer Amit Na­goo said a week ago they no­ticed bub­bles com­ing up from the fis­sures left by the earth­quake.

“Then we start­ed to hear loud cracks and sounds of gas es­cap­ing. Then we start­ed to see mud­flows com­ing out at dif­fer­ent points along the RE Road,” Na­goo said. He said since the earth­quake they have been un­able to cul­ti­vate sev­er­al acreages.

“Now that the vol­ca­noes are com­ing up, we can­not get ac­cess to the land. One vol­cano is at the cen­tre of the road,” Na­goo said.

He said the area should be cor­doned off and farm­ers re­lo­cat­ed.

How­ev­er, pres­i­dent of the Los Iros Hillview Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Rishi Ram­raj said he was hop­ing that the Los Iros area could be de­vel­oped as an agri-tourist site.

“We want this area to be de­vel­oped. The vol­cano site is be­ing used for fun ac­tiv­i­ties and health. We al­ready or­ga­nize tours for school chil­dren who are in­ter­est­ed in ge­ol­o­gy. We think it’s im­por­tant to map the area and de­vel­op it as a tourist site,” Ram­raj added.

He said its been al­most two years since the earth­quake but ge­ol­o­gists and seis­mol­o­gists have been do­ing ac­tive re­search in the area.

Se­nior geo­sci­en­tist from Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration Xavier Moo­nan, who broke the news of the vol­ca­noes emer­gence told Guardian Me­dia that the vol­ca­noes ap­peared over the past week.

“The new cones all oc­cur along the trace of the Au­gust 21st 2018 earth­quake fault rup­ture which com­plete­ly off­set the roads along RE Trace.”

He re­vealed that oil sheen and the strong scent of hy­dro­car­bons ac­com­pa­ny the mud­flow. Mud sam­ples were col­lect­ed for analy­sis and Moo­nan said the area will be close­ly mon­i­tored.

Teams from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies are ex­pect­ed to vis­it the area this week.

Moo­nan said de­spite the vol­ca­noes farm­ing should con­tin­ue but the area must be mon­i­tored.

He said the main threat at the mo­ment was that the vol­ca­noes may block off or dam­age one of the roads in RE.

“There are oth­er ac­cess roads for the farm­ers though,” Moo­nan ex­plained.

He said af­ter the earth­quake, UWI Pe­tro­le­um Geo­science took the ini­tia­tive to con­duct a seis­mic to­mog­ra­phy (re­sis­tiv­i­ty) study.

Aid­ed with near­by oil well da­ta from Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration, map­ping of the rock lay­ers was con­duct­ed. “The da­ta showed that the sur­face rup­ture from the Aug 21st earth­quake was in­deed a re­ac­ti­vat­ed old­er fault which runs deep in­to the sub­sur­face. Faults are the key con­duits for sub­sur­face flu­ids (salt­wa­ter and hy­dro­car­bons) to es­cape to the sur­face. When these flu­ids en­train clays they re­sult in mud vol­ca­noes at sur­face,” Moo­nan ex­plained.

He said for the peo­ple in the area, the vol­ca­noes could cause a bit of an in­con­ve­nience.