PESHAWAR, Oct 27: Authorities in Battagram said on Thursday they were still awaiting orders from the NWFP government to evacuate an estimated 100,000 people as a second team of geologists reached the area to look into reports of volcanic activity in the area.

A senior police official in the northern Frontier district, one of the five severely affected by this month’s devastating earthquake, told Dawn they had submitted an evacuation plan to the provincial government and were awaiting orders.

But the government, officials said, wanted the evacuation to be voluntary and not to force people to leave the area. Civil and military officials maintain that the approaching harsh winter would make it extremely difficult to survive in the high altitude mountains in Alai in Battagram.

“The people up there have no choice. They know it will be very difficult to survive”, military commander looking after relief work in Battagram, Brig. Khalid Mehmood Ahmad, told Dawn on phone.

Aftershocks continue. Another jolt of about 5 magnitude on the Richter Scale hit Battagram where 2,700 people have died in the October 8 earthquake that measured 7.6 on the Richter Scale.

Fear has gripped the inhabitants of Alai where landslides in the adjoining Chel Mountain has triggered speculations of an impending volcanic eruption.

A team of geologists visited the site this week and said that there was no volcanic activity in the area but called for a second look at the site to carry out a thorough study before giving a final verdict.

A six-member team from the National Centre of Excellence, Geology Department, University of Peshawar, reached the troubled area on Thursday.

“I don’t see any chance of a volcanic activity in that area”, Prof. Fazl-i-Rabbi, who heads the team, of told Dawn on phone from Battagram.

“But we would like to see the fissures and cracks which people say have been caused by the supposed volcanic activity, the water which, they say, has changed its colour and the smoke, which they say, is coming out from the mountain,” the professor said.

Prof. Fazl-i-Rabbi, who has done his PhD in geology from France, said his team would need two weeks to complete its report.

“We want to record each and every thing. We have the GPS to take coordinates and carry out hazard mapping. This is what we require immediately,” he said.

He said that one area that had developed fissures seemed dangerous. “That did not look good to me,” he said, Adding that the area was a high-risk zone and mountains that had soft composition could pose serious threat to people due to frequent jolts and landslides.

He said his team would make another attempt to reach the area on Friday before returning to Peshawar.

A government official said an evacuation plan had been submitted to the provincial government that would cost Rs100 million.

“Moving about a hundred thousand people would take time and logistics”, the official said. “We are now waiting for the orders,” he said.

District Police Officer Nisar Tanoli told Dawn that people were reluctant to leave their places.

“Any evacuation will have to be voluntary. We cannot force them. These people have sort of resigned themselves to their fate.

They have been living there for generations and learnt to live with winter,” Mr. Tanoli said. He said that instead of evacuating the entire Alai, the government needed to focus on Pushtoon, Ganther and Banna, which had been severely affected by the earthquake.

But Brig. Khalid Mehmood said that people were now too scared and willing to leave. “They cannot stay in the mountains. They will have to come down”, he said, “It begins to become very cold after mid-November,” he said.

However, the commander added that any evacuation order would have to come from the provincial government. “The decision has to come from the provincial government. We are there to facilitate and help them,” he said.