- Residents of St. Vincent and the Grenadines were told to be ready to evacuate after a volcano began spewing lava, ash and gas.
- La Soufrière is the highest point in St. Vincent and is located near the northern tip of the country, but remained dormant for decades before suddenly becoming active on Tuesday, reports AP.
- The government of the country, which consists of a chain of islands where more than 100,000 people live, has issued an orange warning, meaning eruptions can occur with less than 24 hours notice.
- Last month, authorities from the nearby Caribbean island of Martinique issued a yellow alert for seismic activity under Mount Pelée, the Independent reported.
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Residents of St. Vincent and the Grenadines were told to stay alert, a Caribbean volcano came back to life.
La Soufrière is the highest point in St. Vincent and is located near the northern tip of the country, but remained dormant for decades before spitting out as a start on Tuesday this week, reports AP.
La Soufrière, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, are in the Windward Islands, near Barbados and St Lucia.
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Steam, gas and a volcanic dome formed by lava that reached the earth’s surface could be seen above the volcano, according to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA).
The country’s government, which consists of a chain of islands with more than 100,000 inhabitants, has raised the alert level to orange, meaning outbreaks can occur with less than 24 hours notice.
La Soufrière last erupted in 1979, but no warning caused damage, while an eruption in 1902 resulted in 1,600 deaths.
In an unrelated incident early last month, authorities from the nearby Caribbean island of Martinique issued a yellow warning for seismic activity under Mount Pelée, the Independent reported.
Fabrice Fontaine of Martinique’s volcanological and seismological observatory told the AP that this was the first time a warning of its kind had been issued since the volcano last erupted in 1932.
Mount Pelée also erupted in 1902, killing nearly 30,000 people, making it the deadliest eruption of the entire 20th century.
In December, the Kilauea volcano from Hawaii erupted for the first time since 2018, creating a 600 m deep lava lake, according to NPR.
However, the most active volcanoes in the Americas were the Soufrière Hills in Montserrat, which erupted continuously since 1995 and killed at least 19 people in 1997, Erik Klemetti, a volcanologist at Denison University, Ohio, told AP.