SOURCES: UWI-SRC; Bar­ba­dos Na­tion

The alert lev­el for La Soufriere vol­cano has been raised from yel­low to or­ange, fol­low­ing the for­ma­tion of a small la­va dome with fresh mag­ma at the base of the ex­ist­ing dome in the crater at La Soufriere vol­cano, St. Vin­cent. 

This is the third high­est alert lev­el on the four-colour scheme, with green be­ing the low­est and red be­ing the high­est alert lev­el.

Peo­ple liv­ing in the north­ern third of St Vin­cent—from George­town to Fan­cy, in the east, and north of Belle Isle, in the west—have been told to pre­pare to evac­u­ate at short no­tice, should such an or­der be giv­en, ac­cord­ing to a re­port in a re­gion­al news­pa­per (The Bar­ba­dos Na­tion).

Volcanic Hazard Map for La Soufriere Volcano. Image courtesy UWI-SRC.

A brief state­ment from the UWI Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre (UWI-SRC) re­ports that fresh mag­ma has made a way to the sur­face of the crater with­out as­so­ci­at­ed vol­canic earth­quakes typ­i­cal­ly found in the Less­er An­tilles, hence the ap­pear­ance of the new la­va dome.

UWI-SRC ex­plains that this is an ef­fu­sive erup­tion sim­i­lar to what is seen in Hawaii, but that the Soufriere la­va is not as 'run­ny'. 

The pub­lic has been strong­ly ad­vised NOT to vis­it the vol­cano at this time, and there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that evac­u­a­tions may hap­pen soon—de­pend­ing on the vol­canic ac­tiv­i­ty over the next 24 to 48 hours—from those ar­eas at high­est risk in the event of a ma­jor erup­tion.

A re­port in a re­gion­al news­pa­per states that St Vin­cent & the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Ralph Gon­salves, has urged res­i­dents in the red zone to be ready to evac­u­ate at short no­tice.  How­ev­er, he stressed that the alert was not an or­der to evac­u­ate.

Mean­while, both UWI-SRC and NEMO St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines are con­tin­u­ing to mon­i­tor this event and pro­vide up­dates to the pub­lic.