Extremely heavy ash fell on parts of the Caribbean island of St Vincent on Saturday and a strong sulfur smell enveloped communities, a day after a powerful explosion at La Soufriere volcano uprooted the lives of thousands evacuated under government orders.
Caribbean countries, including Antigua and Guyana, offered assistance by sending emergency supplies or temporarily opening borders to the approximately 16,000 evacuated fleeing ash-covered communities.
The volcano, which last had a major eruption in 1979, erupted and experts warned that explosions could continue for days or weeks. In a previous eruption in 1902, about 1,600 people died.
“The first explosion is not necessarily the biggest explosion this volcano will give,” Richard Robertson, a geologist at the University of the West Indies’ Seismic Research Center, told a news conference.
Conditions worsened overnight in settlements near the volcano because as houses, cars and streets were covered. The lush green scenery turned gray and gloomy, and people left footprints as they walked through the soot.
The prime minister, Ralph Gonsalves, told NBC Radio, a local station, that officials were trying to figure out how to remove the ashes.
“It’s hard to breathe,” Gonsalves said, adding that as the volcano’s evacuation subsided, a large ash and plume of smoke remained. “What goes up must come down.”
He urged people to remain calm and protect themselves from the coronavirus as he celebrated that no deaths or injuries were reported after the eruption in the northern tip of St Vincent, part of an island chain that includes the Grenadines, and where more than 100,000 are home people.
“Agriculture will be badly affected and we may lose animals, and we will have to repair houses, but if we have life and our strength, we will rebuild it better, stronger, together,” he said.
Gonsalves said it could take up to four months for life to return to normal. About 3,200 people stayed in 78 government shelters while four empty cruise ships drifted nearby, waiting to take evacuated people to nearby islands. Those housed in shelters have been tested for Covid-19, and anyone tested positive will be taken to an isolation center.
The first blast occurred Friday morning, a day after the government ordered mandatory evacuations based on warnings from scientists who took note of the seismic activity near dawn on Thursday before dawn.
An ash column burst more than 33,000 feet into the air. Lightning crackles late Friday through the still towering cloud.
The ash forced cancellations of flights and limited evacuations in some areas to poor visibility. Officials have warned that Barbados, St. Lucia and Grenada could see light asphalt as the 4,003-foot volcano continues to rumble. Most of the ash is expected to flow northeast into the Atlantic Ocean.
La Soufriere had an exuberant eruption in December, prompting experts from across the region to analyze, among other things, the formation of a new volcanic dome and changes to its crater lake.
The eastern Caribbean Islands have 19 living volcanoes, including two underwater near the island of Grenada. One of them, Kick ‘Em Jenny, has been active for the past few years. But the most active volcano of all is Soufriere Hills in Montserrat. It has been erupting continuously since 1995, enlarging the capital, Plymouth, and killing at least 19 people in 1997.