Plans to evacuate 100,000 people after volcano fears

Abdul Ghafoor, 33, believes a new calamity could befall the quake-stricken Allai Valley area in the Battagram district of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Ghafoor, like many others in the area, is fearful of volcanic activity they believe has been triggered in nearby mountains by the quake of 8 October, which has killed at least 54,000. "My three children and wife are at the camp set up here, at Bana, and over the past four or five days we have finally got a tent and some blankets. But I am planning to take my family down to Attock [in the northern Punjab], where I have relatives, because these mountains will burst open any time and emit hot fumes and lava," maintained Ghafoor. His concerns are shared by many others in the area. Since the quake struck, the mountains located between Batila and Ganthar villages have been tipped by a cloud of blue smoke, which local people say they have never seen before. They believe that the mysterious smoke and a series of unexplained, loud blasts heard frequently in the area, sometimes at intervals of only a few hours, are the result of volcanic activity deep within the mountains. The reports from Allai, a community of some 150,000 people in the Battagram district, are being taken seriously. The military ordered a seismic survey of the area a few days ago, and while the team has reported that volcanic activity is 'unlikely', plans have been put in place to evacuate 100,000 people from the area, the army has said. Brigadier Khalid Mahmood Ahmed, in charge of the military base set up by the Pakistan army at Battagram, has confirmed to journalists - after flying over the area in a helicopter to check on reports - that he too has seen the blue smoke, saying: "I can say it is definitely coming from the mountains, as are the sounds of the blasts." Fazl Rabbani, of the National Centre of Excellence in Geology at Peshawar University, is conducting a more detailed geological survey of Allai with a team of experts and told IRIN on Saturday: "I don't see a possibility of volcanic activity, but we would like to see first-hand the fissures and cracks appearing in the mountain face, the water which people say has changed colour and the smoke from the mountain." The six-member team will complete its findings in two weeks. Final orders for an evacuation are being awaited in the area by the military, police and the local administration, with Brigadier Mehmood saying: "People know they must leave. It will not be possible for them to survive here." Over 1,000 people died in the Allai area, one of the most remote valleys in the Battagram district, as a consequence of the quake. Some 150,000 people live in the area, the largest number based at the central village of Bana, located some 260 km from the capital Islamabad. The village is only accessible along the 14 km Thakot-Bana road, which has repeatedly been closed as a result of new landslides. Other settlements in the area, some perched perilously atop steep slopes, are dotted around Bana. New deaths continue to be reported, even though a tent village has been set up and aid is finally reaching the area. The destruction of almost every building in the area by the quake means people who have not moved into the tent village at Bana literally have no shelter, as temperatures continue to drop rapidly. The unrelenting aftershocks have also caused temporary roofs, rigged atop rough stone walls, to tumble over, and the mayor of Batila, Abdul Sattar, has warned: "More deaths could follow if people get no protection from the cold because conditions are already very bad." According to reports, a similar fear of volcanic activity was also raised in villages around Muzaffarabad, the devastated capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, a few days after the quake. However, military experts noted that the smoke seen over the mountains and the rumblings were, "just a part of the disturbances caused by the quake," and since then the sounds and smoke have gradually vanished.