Works continue on Piparo roads amid mud volcano activity

SASCHA WIL­SON

Se­nior Re­porter

Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter, Jear­lean John, says while work con­tin­ues on dam­aged road­ways in Pi­paro, a com­plete restora­tion can­not be done at this time due to on­go­ing ground move­ment in the area.

Min­is­ter John, ac­com­pa­nied by her team, con­duct­ed a pre-dawn site vis­it to as­sess the works that had been done.

The road­way was se­vere­ly af­fect­ed fol­low­ing height­ened ac­tiv­i­ty at the Pi­paro mud vol­cano on Christ­mas Eve, be­com­ing im­pass­able and cut­ting off ac­cess for res­i­dents.

The min­is­ter, who al­so vis­it­ed the com­mu­ni­ty on Christ­mas Day, said crews car­ried out ex­ten­sive works, al­low­ing res­i­dents on both sides of the dam­aged sec­tion at Robin­son Hill to re­con­nect to the Guayagua­yare–Tabaquite Road via Hou­sanie Trace and Pi­paro Road.

Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion works al­so are be­ing done on the ac­cess road to en­sure a "smoother" tran­si­tion in case of an evac­u­a­tion.

Al­though res­i­dents are re­quest­ing full re­con­struc­tion of the road­way, Min­is­ter John said this can­not be un­der­tak­en at this time due to safe­ty con­cerns and the sig­nif­i­cant en­gi­neer­ing costs in­volved.

“Al­though res­i­dents are ask­ing for the com­plete restora­tion, we can't change it be­cause just look­ing at this [land­slip]. This drop as it is here,” she point­ed out, “would be about $20 mil­lion. It might look small but it's sig­nif­i­cant en­gi­neer­ing that will have to go on. We can­not com­mit to that kind of mon­ey un­til we know what is hap­pen­ing. So, we are re­al­ly try­ing, and we use a lot of in-house re­sources to re­store."

She said the min­istry may have to do pro­cure­ment for a bai­ley bridge, but they car­ried out some main­te­nance works and erect­ed cau­tion signs.

The min­is­ter al­so as­sured that if the sit­u­a­tion be­comes so dan­ger­ous that re­lo­ca­tion be­comes nec­es­sary, the Gov­ern­ment will take the re­quired mea­sures. She said on­ly one res­i­dent raised the is­sue of re­lo­ca­tion, but her im­pres­sion was that no one re­al­ly want­ed to leave their homes.

In the mean­time, on­ly lo­cal traf­fic is be­ing en­cour­aged in the area, and the mud vol­cano re­mains cor­doned off as it is still ac­tive. Res­i­dents said they ob­served fresh cracks on the road ear­li­er this morn­ing.

Al­so tour­ing with the min­is­ter were Princes Town MP Aiy­na Ali, Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gowrie Roop­nar­ine, Cou­va Tabaquite Tal­paro chair­man Ryan Ram­per­sad, and oth­er of­fi­cials.