Residents: No immediate threat from Piparo mud volcano

ALTHOUGH the Piparo mud volcano erupted during last Tuesday’s earthquake, those who live closest to it are not afraid of another bigger eruption.

Piparo resident, 74-year-old Parbatee Suratt, believes the volcano will not erupt again in her lifetime as it did in February, 1997 destroying homes, covering cars and killing livestock. Suratt lives several hundred feet from the volcanic cones and her front yard is usually a parking spot for outsiders who visit the site.

When Newsday visited the volcano yesterday, flags from Hindu prayer ceremonies surrounded the two prominent volcanic cones, which were covered in fresh mud. More mud dribbled from the mouths of the cones and a soft hissing sound could be heard coming from one.

Suratt said the religious group that usually commemorates the 1997 eruption with an annual prayer ceremony has held three such ceremonies for the year so far. “They said they are afraid of another big eruption but I don’t see that happening, I think it will not happen again in my lifetime,” she said.

“The day for the earthquake it sent up some mud in the air but only about ten feet high and it didn’t do that for long.”

Suratt said she and her husband, Kenneth Suratt, 69, were sitting at the side of the road when the earthquake struck last Tuesday and at first, they believed the volcano had caused the earth to shake.

“We were sitting right in front the house and when it start to shake we hear the volcano making noise but we didn’t get up to run or panic.” Kenneth said he believes those who panic in an emergency will be the first to be hurt.

“If it have to erupt again, which I feel will be real years from now, is the people who running like they are wild who will get hurt first,” he said.

As the couple relaxed in their garden to the side of their house, two minivans with visitors drove off from the site.

“Since somebody take a picture last week and post it on Facebook, every day is four and five carload of people coming to see the volcano. But it don’t have anything to see, is just a little bit of mud that coming up,” Kenneth said.

One visitor, Elizabeth Atwell, said she lives in Morvant and has never been to the site. Atwell said the recent social media posts about the volcano had piqued her interest and she brought her grandson, Nathan Castello, to visit the site as well. “I’ve never been here before, I was a little amazed to see how it is,” she said. Atwell said she took some volcanic mud to make a face mask as she understands the mud has cleansing properties.

As she left, Atwell said her family would visit the Devil’s Woodyard volcano in Princes Town next.