Gail Alexan­der

Fear and amaze­ment at yes­ter­day’s show of force by na­ture in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines - but Tri­nis there are safe.

Na­tion­als of T&T re­sid­ing in St Vin­cent are all ac­count­ed for and safe fol­low­ing yes­ter­day’s erup­tions of the La Soufriere vol­cano and so far, no one has re­quest­ed evac­u­a­tion, says For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs Min­is­ter Amery Browne.

But for Vin­cen­tians whose day be­gan with the first erup­tion at 8.41 am a fol­lowed by an­oth­er around 3 pm and oth­ers, it was a scary or sur­re­al event. Up to around 7 pm, there were about eight erup­tions.

The vol­cano in north­ern St Vin­cent last erupt­ed in 1979. It start­ed “rum­bling” on Thurs­day with plumes of emis­sions seen from out at sea. Mag­ma be­gan mov­ing around 4 am yes­ter­day. It sub­se­quent­ly erupt­ed ex­plo­sive­ly yes­ter­day, spew­ing a 10km high ash col­umn as far as Ar­gyle Air­port in the is­land’s south.

The sec­ond erup­tion fea­tured a small­er col­umn about 4 km. Yes­ter­day, north­ern ar­eas - like Chateaube­lair in the Red Zone - were thick­ly awash with ash, which ex­tend­ed even south to parts of the is­land’s cap­i­tal Kingstown. No la­va flows were re­port­ed, on­ly ash plumes. Sci­en­tists have ex­plained that Caribbean vol­ca­noes tend not to have la­va flows.

St Vin­cent’s Na­tion­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Or­gan­i­sa­tion’s graph showed the ash plume fol­low­ing the erup­tion ex­tend­ing up to 20,000 feet head­ing East - with Bar­ba­dos and north­ern is­lands di­rect­ly in its path.

That sit­u­a­tion de­vel­oped ex­act­ly as UWI Seis­mic Cen­tre ge­ol­o­gist Richard Richard­son had pro­ject­ed on Thurs­day. He’d said the main fall­out for neigh­bour­ing is­lands would be ash. He’d pre­dict­ed that could af­fect not on­ly St Vin­cent’s north­ern part but al­so wider ar­eas such as Bar­ba­dos, St Lu­cia and it could al­so af­fect avi­a­tion traf­fic al­so.

Some Vin­cen­tians’ re­ac­tions showed it was scary for them. One man, whose cam­era footage dis­played the huge tow­er­ing ex­panse of bil­low­ing ash, stat­ed, “The Soufriere just blow, guys. Watch, look at this, wow! ... see­ing this thing live. Look Chester cot­tage right here! This thing mount over the top of the moun­tain! Wow - the vol­cano just blow in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.”

Voic­es in the back­ground are heard ex­claim­ing at the erup­tions.

In an­oth­er, a woman yelled in hor­ror, “Oh gosh watch it! Ho-ly, it re­al­ly erupt!! My God!!”

Clare Keiz­er (ed­i­tor/CEO Search­light news­pa­per) said no deaths had been re­port­ed, as Vin­cen­tians had been pre­pared and evac­u­a­tions had been done.

“We’re very grate­ful. But the vol­ca­nol­o­gists project we’ll have erup­tions for days or week, maybe even longer,” Keiz­er told Guardian Me­dia.

She’d ex­pe­ri­enced the 1979 erup­tion as a child and had seen light­ning oc­cur­ring as it had tak­en place in the night.

“We’re in the south but there are still peo­ple in the Red Zone - which was to have evac­u­at­ed - who re­mained there,” she said.

There are al­so about, 2,000 in gov­ern­ment evac­u­a­tion shel­ters and many more went to oth­er lo­ca­tions. She said there are two cruise ships in the har­bour to take peo­ple off the is­land.

The night be­fore, streams of mo­torists had made their way down the hilly ar­eas late in­to the night, evac­u­at­ing away from the vol­cano.

In an­oth­er video, peo­ple were trudg­ing through ar­eas cov­ered with ash head­ing to re­lo­cate. A man said his broth­er’s van had been work­ing all night tak­ing peo­ple out and they’d had no rest “... Un­til every­body get out.”

Yes­ter­day, T&T was brac­ing for weath­er fall­out from the erup­tions’ ash in the at­mos­phere. There were light grey-cloud cov­er-skies in parts of North Trinidad and show­ers last af­ter­noon.

Cari­com chair­man, T&T PM Dr Kei­th Row­ley, pri­or to the erup­tion, said Cari­com had mo­bilised to sup­port St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and Cari­com mem­ber states have of­fered sup­port to house evac­uees from the af­fect­ed area.

The sci­en­tif­ic team from UWI’s Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre (SRC) has been on the is­land con­stant­ly mon­i­tor­ing the vol­cano and ren­der­ing sci­en­tif­ic ad­vice. He not­ed oth­er re­gion­al agen­cies as­sist­ing on dis­as­ter man­age­ment, evac­u­a­tion and lo­gis­tics plan­ning.