Panic as Piparo Mud Volcano rumbles

While au­thor­i­ties have cor­doned off the Pi­paro Mud Vol­cano fol­low­ing an in­crease in ac­tiv­i­ty, one fam­i­ly may have to evac­u­ate as earth move­ment has start­ed to dam­age their home.
Large fis­sures from the vol­cano con­tin­ued to widen from Sat­ur­day night in­to yes­ter­day, with fresh mounds of mud pil­ing up near the mouth.
As scores of cu­ri­ous vis­i­tors and res­i­dents gath­ered, the machi­nat­ed sound could be heard and gas was re­leased every few min­utes.
Po­lice of­fi­cers were do­ing pa­trols, in case there was a need to ini­ti­ate an emer­gency ex­er­cise.
For Fedell Solomon, whose home is sit­u­at­ed close to the vol­cano, the mem­o­ries of the 1997 erup­tion that al­most flat­tened their com­mu­ni­ty rushed to mind.
Solomon was on­ly nine years old back then, but when the equip­ment room be­gan sep­a­rat­ing from the rest of his fam­i­ly home, they im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan pack­ing up im­por­tant doc­u­ments and clothes and putting it in their ve­hi­cle in case they need­ed to evac­u­ate.
“We were get­ting ready for bed and just heard some­thing like a hard gun­shot. We thought it was some­one try­ing to come in­to the prop­er­ty. We tried to fig­ure out what it was. We didn’t see any move­ments un­til the sec­ond sim­i­lar noise and then a piece of con­crete lift­ed off.
It was then the house start­ed mov­ing. All we could have done was to ob­serve it mov­ing. We tried to move what­ev­er we could safe­ly,” Solomon said.
In 1997 erup­tion, the house which has been there for the past 30 years, al­so sus­tained dam­age. He said it is fright­en­ing liv­ing close to the vol­cano and his fam­i­ly is hop­ing for the best. He said they are con­tem­plat­ing to evac­u­ate their home if the sit­u­a­tion wors­ens.
Se­nior geo­sci­en­tist Xavier Moo­nan ad­vised cit­i­zens not to ven­ture near the Pi­paro mud vol­cano since drone sur­veys in­di­cat­ed it was about to blow.
Moo­nan and his team toured the vol­cano yes­ter­day morn­ing, hours af­ter res­i­dents re­port­ed see­ing fis­sures and cracks around the area.
In an in­ter­view, Moo­nan said: “We just drone sur­veyed the mud vol­cano. We should ad­vise peo­ple to not ven­ture on­to it at least. It looks like it may blow very soon. We are see­ing up to two feet of mo­tion on some frac­tures.”
Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath, who viewed the ac­tiv­i­ty at the vol­cano be­lieves that res­i­dents should not take any chances and those liv­ing close­ly should evac­u­ate.
Re­call­ing that the 1997 erup­tion came like a “thief in the night” he said the new de­vel­op­ment has caused pan­ic in the com­mu­ni­ty and was wor­ried that none of the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties had shown up to as­sess the con­di­tions. Source: Guadian, Sept. 24, 2019

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