RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Re­searchers have re­turned to con­tin­ue soil tests on earth­quake dev­as­tat­ed lands in Los Iros with the hope of find­ing out why land for­ma­tions oc­curred fol­low­ing the 6.9 mag­ni­tude earth­quake last Au­gust.

The tests are be­ing done near the bub­bling Erin Bouff mud vol­ca­noes on the south­ern coasts which have been ooz­ing liq­uid mud.

The slur­ries from the Anglais Point Mud Vol­cano at Loren­sotte have reached down to the sea.

Even though the lands have been grad­ed and farm­ers have re­sumed plant­i­ng in the area, en­gi­neer­ing seis­mol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre Dr Il­ias Pa­padopou­los says re­search is on­go­ing and should be com­plet­ed with­in the next few months.

UWI's team conducts a seismic assessment at RE Road, Los Iros Erin.

Ivan Toolsie

Speak­ing ex­clu­sive­ly to Guardian Me­dia last week, Pa­padopou­los said a team from the UWI SEC, as well as of­fi­cials from Geo-tech As­so­ciates, have been try­ing to as­cer­tain why some ar­eas be­came liqui­fied fol­low­ing the Au­gust 21 earth­quake.

"As you know, a lot of for­ma­tions were ob­served in the farms and we are still try­ing to fig­ure out what are the mech­a­nisms that caused that de­struc­tion," Pa­padopou­los said.

He not­ed, "So far we are work­ing on the sub­sur­face to un­der­stand what hap­pened. Since Mon­day to to­day, there is a tech­ni­cal com­pa­ny that is do­ing the re­search which will be used to un­der­stand what caused the de­struc­tion of the lands."

Pa­padopou­los said the land mass un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion is very soft.

"We know that the area has be­come liqui­fied and that is why we see­ing the mud vol­ca­noes. We are to put some cal­cu­la­tions on how soft it is so that we can sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly prove that the area is liqui­fied and de­ter­mine whether this dev­as­ta­tion could hap­pen again," Pa­padopou­los added.

UWI's team conducts a seismic assessment at RE Road, Los Iros Erin.

Ivan Toolsie

He not­ed that the re­search will in­di­cate whether it is dan­ger­ous to farm on that piece of land.

Say­ing there are no hous­es in the re­gion, Pa­padopou­los said the farms in Los Iros could be af­fect­ed if there is an­oth­er earth­quake sim­i­lar to what oc­curred in Au­gust. He said the drilling was sup­posed to be com­plet­ed by Wednes­day.

"It will take a month to process the sam­ples of the soil. This will be processed by a com­pa­ny called Ge­ot­ech As­so­ciates Ltd which we hired to do the drilling," Pa­padopou­los said, adding that sam­ples have been tak­en at dif­fer­ent depths down to 20 me­tres.

"Once the soil tests are processed and a re­port is sub­mit­ted, the UWI-SRC will make fi­nal con­clu­sions and rec­om­men­da­tions," Pa­padopou­los said.

He not­ed that this fi­nal re­port should be made pub­lic with­in the next few months.

UWI's team conducts a seismic assessment at RE Road, Los Iros Erin.

Ivan Toolsie

Pa­padopou­los said sim­i­lar for­ma­tions have oc­curred at Moru­ga where a house was de­stroyed fol­low­ing the earth­quake. He not­ed that there are oth­er ar­eas in T&T where the soil has be­come liqui­fied, adding that there is no com­plete analy­sis as yet to draw cor­re­la­tions to see the full pic­ture.

He al­so re­it­er­at­ed that T&T will ex­pe­ri­ence a big earth­quake.

"We don't know how soon or how big it will be but it will hap­pen and we have to be pre­pared," Pa­padopou­los said.

Earth­quake dev­as­ta­tion

Over 50 acres of lu­cra­tive farm­lands were dev­as­tat­ed in the earth­quake which caused land­slides off Roy­al En­gi­neer Road and Hillview at Los Iros, near Erin.

When the cracks opened, sev­er­al ac­cess roads be­came im­pass­able for farm­ers to get to their pro­duce. The earth swal­lowed two wa­ter-pumps and tools be­long­ing to farmer Nob­bie Mathu­ra.

Three pieces of his equip­ment – an ex­ca­va­tor, a basin plough and a disc banker– were parked in the yard of the fam­i­ly’s camp and dropped in­to the cracks.

There was dam­age to farm­ers’ ir­ri­ga­tion sys­tems and stock hous­es.

UWI's team conducts a seismic assessment at RE Road, Los Iros Erin.

Ivan Toolsie

The wa­ter from ponds, some of which had tilapias and cas­caduras pitched in­to the air and then dried up in­to cracks. More than 25 acres were filled with crops ready to har­vest.

With­in months of the dev­as­ta­tion, Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture Clarence Ramb­harat or­gan­ised to have farm­ers re­lo­cat­ed to oth­er ar­eas. The lands were ploughed and farm­ing re­sumed.