The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty says this coun­try is not on­ly pro­vid­ing as­sis­tance to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines as a re­sult of the vol­canic erup­tion but al­so to Bar­ba­dos which has been af­fect­ed by the vol­cano’s ash­fall.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the min­istry said, “The dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects of the ash clouds from the erup­tions of La Soufriere in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines over the past week, did not on­ly af­fect the is­land and its in­hab­i­tants but ex­tend­ed east­ward to Bar­ba­dos.”

It said in a show of sup­port and sol­i­dar­i­ty with Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Caribbean neigh­bours, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, through the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM), con­tin­ued un­abat­ed­ly to pro­vide re­lief sup­port to the peo­ple of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines. It added this sup­port has now ex­tend­ed to the peo­ple and Gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos as they seek to un­der­take clean-up ef­forts fol­low­ing the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of sul­fu­ric ash fall from La Soufriere.

The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty said on Sat­ur­day, April 17, much-need­ed clean­ing items that were col­lect­ed with the as­sis­tance of the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try and mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) were stored at the ODPM’s ware­house over the past 24 hours.

It ex­plained that these items were then trans­ferred to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Air Guard’s (TTAG) Ul­ric Cross Air Sta­tion with the as­sis­tance of sol­diers from the First En­gi­neer Bat­tal­ion, Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment. The op­er­a­tion con­tin­ued with both sol­diers and air­men work­ing to­geth­er to load items such as safe­ty gog­gles, in­dus­tri­al brooms and cov­er­alls on­to air­craft pro­vid­ed by the TTAG and the Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sys­tem (RSS).

The Air Guard’s air­craft with 2,000 lbs of car­go on board, de­part­ed Trinidad at 1.55 pm Sat­ur­day for Bar­ba­dos’ Grant­ley Adams In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. The RSS air­craft de­part­ed one hour lat­er with 2,800 lbs of car­go for the same des­ti­na­tion. An­oth­er 1,000 lbs of car­go are await­ing ship­ment to Bar­ba­dos.

The min­istry said yes­ter­day these ship­ments are ex­pect­ed to leave with­in the next 48 hours.

Mean­while, the seis­mic ac­tiv­i­ty at the La Soufriere vol­cano con­tin­ued on Sat­ur­day ac­cord­ing to UWI Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre.

The cen­tre in a Face­book post ex­plained that seis­mic ac­tiv­i­ty con­tin­ued with tremor, hy­brid earth­quakes and over two hours of low­er-lev­el tremor gen­er­at­ed by ex­plo­sive ac­tiv­i­ty and vent­ing.

The cen­tre said the vol­cano con­tin­ues to erupt al­though ex­plo­sive ac­tiv­i­ty ap­peared, up to Sat­ur­day, to be wan­ing but it added there maybe the growth of a la­va dome, which is yet to be con­firmed.

The vol­cano erupt­ed on April 9.