Disruptions Follow Eruptions on Isle

From almost any vantage point on the island, the people of Montserrat can see the mark of the monster come to life in their backyard.

Smoke curls ominously from the tip of the Soufriere Hills. Red-hot boulders tumble down the scorched slopes at night. They are dramatic reminders that Montserratians live in the shadow of a volcano that has been erupting for more than five years.

“Sometimes, in my sleep, I see it all happening again,” says Thomas Lee, a tour operator whose home was obliterated in 1997 as he watched from the safety of a nearby mountaintop.

He has climbed with a visitor to the top of Garibaldi Hill, with the former capital of Plymouth buried in ash spread before him and the simmering volcano across the valley.

Even though the remaining islanders are now in safe zones, they are on alert for more eruptions. Scientists at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory say recent elevated seismic activity could be the harbinger of further momentous eruptions.

Sweet mangoes and papaya once grew in abundance in the southern hills before the Soufriere Hills volcano began to erupt on July 18, 1995.

The volcano has since claimed 19 lives and chased away more than half the population, leaving only 4,000 people on the “Emerald Isle.”

Soufriere destroyed almost the entire southern half of Montserrat, laying waste to hospitals, businesses, government buildings and the airport, where a flow of superheated rock melted the departure lounge. Eruptions occasionally hurl sizzling rocks into the sea just yards from where airplanes used to land.

Most people now come by ferry from Antigua. A daily helicopter service from Antigua has long waiting lists.

The volcano has insinuated itself into every conceivable aspect of life, inspiring dozens of T-shirts, signs and books.

It sprouts new spines of molten rock at its tip weekly, sometimes daily. They appear like gargoyles, ever changing the face of the mountain, only to collapse and careen down hillsides that once boasted idyllic scenes of sheep, cattle and farmers.

These “pyroclastic flows”--superheated air and red-hot boulders the size of cars--descend at up to 200 mph and incinerate everything in their path.

Roiling ash clouds--called “hot hurricanes”--often spew thousands of feet into the air, then spread over the countryside, burning houses, plants, animals and people. Ash drifts far afield, sometimes to Antigua, 30 miles to the northeast, and even as far as Puerto Rico, 250 miles to the west.

People living within the volcano’s reach have had to leave the island or move to its less lush northern end. Scientists say the risk is minimal for those in the north, though the area is occasionally pelted with gravel from violent explosions and the volcano’s sulfurous fumes drift over them.

With help from London, the British colony erected housing for hundreds of people. The homes are neat and colorful with a good view of the sea, but there is a numbing sameness to the resettled areas.

Some say this uprooting of community life has caused worse psychic scars than fear of the volcano or actual damage from ash--respiratory problems have been relatively minor, although they are still being studied.

“We have quite a lot of psychological problems,” says Montserrat’s chief medical officer, Dr. Gordon Avery.

“So many people have had a complete change in their lifestyle, which was basically a good one. They owned their own houses, had reasonable space, gardens to tend. They had their friends around them, and extended family. All that’s been totally disrupted.”

A health survey found that nearly 66% of those studied suffered some form of anxiety or depression. In schools, teachers complain about a breakdown of discipline, and there is anecdotal evidence of a rise in violent crime. The government has recently imported two psychologists to offer counseling for emotional problems.

In the worst cases, Avery says, some people cannot even look at the volcano. “No, I won’t look at it!” Carol Brade exclaims as she emerges from church. “It could go off any time--and it’s hurt too many of my friends.”

Others are obsessively attentive, studying minute changes to the landscape and dispatching sketches and reports to the volcano observatory, where they are logged and filed.

But some people seem to take the situation in stride. “I’m not scared,” says Laretta Joseph, owner of the Desert Storm Bar in Salem, where patrons can sip Carib beer while watching smoldering Soufriere out the back window.

“What will be, will be,” Joseph says. “Sometimes the ash blows over in the middle of the day and it’s just like nighttime, all darkness. We just shut our windows and wait for it to blow over. Then we open our windows and get on with our lives.”

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Montserrat Volcano Observatory: https://www.geo.mtu.edu/ volcanoes/west.indies/soufriere/

U.S. Geological Survey site on Montserrat: https://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/WestIndies/ Montserrat/framework.html