THE CARIBBEAN ISLAND OF ST. VINCENT WAS HIT BY ANOTHER EXPLOSIVE EVENT FROM THE LA SOUFRIERE VOLCANO EARLY ON SUNDAY AS ASH CLOUDS BEGAN TO BLANKET PARTS OF THE ISLAND OF BARBADOS.
ASH CLOUDS SPREAD
• The Caribbean St. Vincent island was hit by another explosive event from the La Soufriere volcano early on Sunday, triggering power cuts and water outages in some areas, while ash clouds began to blanket parts of the island of Barbados.
After decades of inactivity, the volcano erupted on Friday, spewing dark clouds of ash some 10 kilometres into the air and prompting an evacuation of thousands of people on the island. The volcano has continued to rumble and vent ash since then, with ash coating rooftops, cars and roads in Kingstown, the capital of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Videos from St. Vincent showed a ghost-like landscape.
A Reuters witness in the town of Rabaka, just over three kilometres from the volcano, said the ground was covered with about 30 centimetres of ash and rock fragments from the blast. Ash clouds blotted out the sun, giving the sky a bleak twilight look.
Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said it was unclear how much more ash the volcano would vent out, adding that more than 3,200 people were now in shelters.
“All I'm asking of everybody is to be calm,” Gonsalves told reporters on a visit to a shelter.
On Sunday morning, St. Vincent's National Emergency Management Organization (NEMO) said there was a huge power outage after “another explosive event” at the volcano. However, by 12 p.m. ET, power had been restored, residents said.
“Explosions and accompanying ashfall, of similar or larger magnitude, are likely to continue to occur over the next few days,” the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre said on Twitter.
St. Vincent and the Grenadines, which has a population of just over 100,000, has not experienced volcanic activity since 1979, when an eruption caused approximately $100 million in damages. An eruption by La Soufriere in 1902 killed more than 1,000 people. The name means “sulphur outlet” in French.
Finance Minister Camillo Gonsalves said the government believes about 20,000 people will be internally displaced for about three to four months.
“Historically, the volcano keeps going intermittently for a couple months,” he said. “Most crops on island will be lost, and untold livestock.”
Some houses on the island have also collapsed due to the weight of the ash, Gonsalves added.
In the tourist island of Barbados, about 178 kilometres from St. Vincent, the meteorological services agency said varying intensities of ash were impacting the island.