THE SOUFRIÈRE HILLS ERUPTS IN MONTSERRAT ISLAND

Montserrat Island, Caribbean Sea

Today, The Grandma has been organizing her travel photos. She has found some photos of Montserrat, the Caribbean island. She visited Montserrat some years ago because she was very interested in knowing this island that takes its name from Montserrat, the most popular Catalan mountain.

On a day like today in 1995, the Soufrière Hills volcano erupts in Montserrat. Over the course of several years, it devastates the island, destroying the capital and forcing most of the population to flee. The Grandma wants to remember this fact that changed the lives of Montserrat inhabitants forever.

The Grandma has remembered her travel across the Caribbean Islands and she has decided to come back with her friends Claire Fontaine, Tina Picotes, Joseph de Ca'th Lon, Jordi Santanyí and Tonyi Tamaki.

The Soufrière Hills volcano is an active, complex stratovolcano with many lava domes forming its summit on the Caribbean island of Montserrat.

Many volcanoes in the Caribbean are named Soufrière, in French sulphur outlet. These include La Soufrière or Soufrière Saint Vincent on the island of Saint Vincent and La Grande Soufrière on Guadeloupe. After a long period of dormancy, the Soufrière Hills volcano became active in 1995 and has continued to erupt ever since.

Its eruptions have rendered more than half of Montserrat uninhabitable, destroying the capital city, Plymouth, and causing widespread evacuations: about two thirds of the population have left the island.

Lava Dome of Soufrière Hills volcano, Montserrat

It is andesitic in nature, and the current pattern of activity includes periods of lava dome growth, punctuated by brief episodes of dome collapse which result in pyroclastic flows, ash venting, and explosive eruption.

The volcano is monitored by the Montserrat Volcano Observatory. Volcanic gas emissions from this volcano are measured by a Multi-Component Gas Analyzer System, which detects pre-eruptive degassing of rising magmas, improving prediction of volcanic activity.

-2460 BCE (± 70 years): An explosive eruption formed English's Crater.

-1550 CE (± 50 years): Between 25 and 65 million cubic metres of lava was erupted at Castle Peak.

More information: Government of Montserrat

Seismic activity had occurred in 1897–1898, 1933–1937, and again in 1966–1967, but the eruption that began on 18 July 1995 was the first since the turn of the 20th century in Montserrat. When pyroclastic flows and mudflows began occurring regularly, the capital, Plymouth, was evacuated, and a few weeks later a pyroclastic flow covered the city in several metres of debris.

The first phreatic explosion in this new period of activity occurred on 21 August 1995, and such activity lasted for 18 weeks until it caused an andesitic lava dome formation. This was initially confined by a sector-collapse scar. This period lasted for another 60 weeks, after which there were major dome collapses and two periods of explosive volcanic eruptions and fountain-collapse pyroclastic flows. The explosion blanketed Plymouth, 6 kilometres  away, in a thick layer of ash and darkened the sky almost completely.

More information: BBC

Earthquakes continued to occur in three epicenter zones: beneath the Soufrière Hills volcano, in the ridge running to the north-east, and beneath St George's Hill, about 5 kilometres to the north-west.

Montserrat after the Soufrière Hills eruption

A large eruption on 25 June 1997 resulted in the deaths of nineteen people. The island's airport was directly in the path of the main pyroclastic flow and was completely destroyed. Montserrat's tourist industry also crashed, although it began to recover within fifteen years.

The governments of the United Kingdom and Montserrat led the aid effort, including a £41 million package provided to the people of Montserrat; however, riots followed as the people protested that the British Government was not doing enough to aid relief.

The riots followed a £10 million aid offer by International Development Secretary Clare Short, prompting the resignation of Bertrand Osborne, then Chief Minister of Montserrat, after allegations of being too pro-British and not demanding a better offer.

The British destroyer HMS Liverpool took a large role in evacuating Montserrat's population to other islands; this included Antigua and Barbuda, who warned they would not be able to cope with many more refugees. About 7,000 people, or two-thirds of the population, left Montserrat; 4,000 went to the United Kingdom.

On 24 December 2006, streaks of red from the pyroclastic flows became visible. On 8 January 2007, an evacuation order was issued for areas in the Lower Belham Valley, affecting an additional 100 people.

At 11:27 pm local time on Monday 28 July 2008, an eruption began without any precursory activity. Pyroclastic flow lobes reached Plymouth. These involved juvenile material originating in the collapse of the eruption column. Further, a small part of the eastern side of the lava dome collapsed, generating a pyroclastic flow in Tar River Valley. Several large explosions were registered, with the largest at approximately 11:38 pm. The height of the ash column was estimated at 12,000 m above sea level.

 

 More information: The Guardian

The volcano has become one of the most closely monitored volcanoes in the world since its eruption began, with the Montserrat Volcano Observatory taking detailed measurements and reporting on its activity to the government and population of Montserrat. The observatory is operated by the British Geological Survey under contract to the government of Montserrat.

The 9 October 2008 issue of the journal Science suggests that two interconnected magma chambers lie beneath the surface of the volcano on Montserrat -one six kilometres below the surface and the other at 12 kilometres below the surface. They also show a link between surface behaviour and the size of the deeper magma chamber.

Montserrat after the Soufrière Hills eruption

On 5 February 2010, a vulcanian explosion simultaneously propelled pyroclastic flows down several sides of the mountain, and on 11 February 2010, a partial collapse of the lava dome sent large ash clouds over sections of several nearby islands including Guadeloupe and Antigua. Inhabited areas of Montserrat itself received very little ash accumulation through either event.

Montserrat is a British Overseas Territory (BOT) in the Caribbean. The island is in the Leeward Islands, which is part of the chain known as the Lesser Antilles, in the West Indies.

Montserrat measures approximately 16 km in length and 11 km in width, with approximately 40 km of coastline. Montserrat is nicknamed The Emerald Isle of the Caribbean both for its resemblance to coastal Ireland and for the Irish ancestry of many of its inhabitants.

In 1493, Christopher Columbus named the island Santa María de Montserrate, after the Virgin of Montserrat in the Monastery of Montserrat, on Montserrat mountain, near Barcelona in Catalonia. Montserrat means serrated mountain in Catalan.

More information: The Culture Trip

An exclusion zone, encompassing the southern half of the island to as far north as parts of the Belham Valley, was imposed because of the size of the existing volcanic dome and the resulting potential for pyroclastic activity. Visitors are generally not permitted entry into the exclusion zone, but a view of the destruction of Plymouth can be seen from the top of Garibaldi Hill in Isles Bay. Relatively quiet since early 2010, the volcano continues to be closely monitored by the Montserrat Volcano Observatory.

A new town and port are being developed at Little Bay, which is on the northwest coast of the island. While this construction proceeds, the centre of government and businesses is at Brades.

Montserrat's economy was devastated by the 1995 eruption and its aftermath; currently the island's operating budget is largely supplied by the British government and administered through the Department for International Development (DFID) amounting to approximately £25 million per year. Additional amounts are secured through income and property taxes, licence and other fees as well as customs duties levied on imported goods.

The limited economy of Montserrat, coupled with a population under 5,000, many living in shelters and shacks without utilities, only consumes 1.7 MW of electric power, produced by five diesel generators. Two exploratory geothermal wells have found good resources and the pad for a third geothermal well was prepared in 2016. Together the geothermal wells are expected to produce more power than the island requires.

More information: Dunhill Travel Deals

Ground she's movin' under me, tidal waves out on the sea
Sulfur smoke up in the sky, pretty soon we learn to fly
Let me hear ya now I don't know, I don't know
I don't know where I'm a gonna go when the volcano blow.

Jimmy Buffett