Island residents fear new volcanic blasts as aid arrives

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent — Heavy ash rained down across the eastern 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 of people who evacuated their homes under government orders.

Lush green Caribbean villages were transformed into a sort of gloomy, gray version of Alpine villages under a blanket of soot, which also hung in the air, obscuring the sun.

Nearby nations including Antigua and Guyana have offered help by either shipping emergency supplies or temporarily opening their borders to the roughly 16,000 evacuees fleeing ashcovered communities with as many personal belongings as they could stuff into suitcases and backpacks.

The volcano, which last had a sizable eruption in 1979, kept rumbling and experts warned that explosions could continue for days or weeks. A previous eruption in 1902 killed 1,600 people.

“The first bang is not necessarily the biggest bang this volcano will give,” said Richard Robertson, a geologist with the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Center.

Conditions for many worsened overnight as heavy ash covered homes, cars and streets and even the runway of the airport at the opposite end of the roughly 20milelong island from the volcano’s crater. People left footprints in the ash as they trudged away from their homes.

Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves told NBC Radio, a local station, that officials were trying to figure out how to remove the ash.

“It’s difficult to breath,” Gonsalves said, adding that while the volcano’s venting has diminished, a big plume of ash and smoke remained. “What goes up, must come down.”

He asked people to be patient and keep protecting 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 is home to more than 100,000 people.

“Agriculture will be badly affected, and we may have some loss of animals, and we will have to do repairs to houses, but if we have life, and we have strength, we will build it back better, stronger, together,” he said.