Mt Bagana eruption emitting significant amount of ash lava flow to nearby villages. Photo: Facebook.com / Rø Gå Tõ
A new report says the eruption of Bougainville's Mt Bagana in early July could not have been picked up by authorities because it is currently not instrumentally monitored.
Papua New Guinea has about 20 active volcanoes and two are located in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville - Mt Bagana and Mt Balbi.
The Post Courier reports the agency responsible for monitoring volcanoes in the country, the Rabaul Volcanological Observatory (RVO), is monitoring only seven of them with instrumental computer-based data acquisition systems located in five areas.
RVO Assistant Director Ima Itikarai confirmed to the newspaper that before the eruption of Mt Bagana, the volcano was not monitored by RVO.
He said the last time it had been monitored was in 2015 using paper-based analogue monitoring equipment.
Monitoring ceased then after the observer, Thomas Mausing, died.
According to the Volcano Information Bulletin dated July 30, the RVO report on Mt Bagana had stated: "No dedicated observer is available on the ground to provide ongoing, consistent, reliable ground-based observations."
Plan to improve volcano monitoring
When Mt Bagana erupted on July 7 the information provided to RVO was from a teacher at a local school and the Department of Mining in the ABG.
Ima Itikarai revealed that part of the Department's strategic plan includes RVO's workplans to increase the number of instrumentally monitored volcanoes.
"The volcanoes include Bagana, Langila in West New Britain, Karkar in Madang and Kadavor in East Sepik.
"This is yet to be realised due to the lack of certain enabling infrastructure.
"Two such key infrastructures are equipment housing and mobile communication infrastructure, and in particular 4G network communication towers.
According to Itikarai: "If there was that infrastructure, we would have already installed the current monitoring technology for Bagana."
He added that the requirement for 4G network allows real-time streaming of monitored data, like seismicity, from the outstation volcanoes to the central observatory at Rabaul where the data can be accessed and analysed immediately by scientists.
"This information can then be provided to other stakeholders in a timely manner, especially during periods of increased activity."
- Post Courier