By: Staff Writer
Janaury 26, 2021
The national emergency director in St Vincent and the Grenadines said that the La Soufirere volcano evacuation zone has increased to add two new areas in the event of an explosive eruption.
Michelle Forbes, director of the national emergency organisation in SVG, speaking on a panel over the weekend, said: “We have already made a decision. In the event of evacuation, we will also have to evacuate Chateaubelair and Fitzhughes even though they’re not in the red. So in the first order of evacuation will be from fancy come down. And also Chateaubelair and Fitzhughes because of their close proximity to the on-going dome building on the western flats.”
The original volcano map has Chateaubelair in orange, but it will be updated as the situation has changed.
The areas expected to feel the impact of the volcano is on the western side of the island and not just the northern end where the constituency of Fancy is. Ms Forbes said that is comes as a result of studies done over the last 30 years and from the 1995 eruption where scientists have agreed that they must extend their red-zone down to Georgetown in the middle-eastern portion of the island.
Ms Forbes also said: “We have the green alert that would have been last year before December when we had to raise the alert; yellow when it becomes a bit restless; and you know what we have to go straight to orange in terms of highly elevated activity. Now red is really when any option is in progress. There is an effusive eruption in progress now, but this table was really designed for an explosive eruption.”
Dr Richard Robertson, professor of geology and past director of the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre (UWISRC), told Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves and a team of media persons that the volcano can become explosive within 48 hours and that they are trying their best to gauge the time it may explode in order to give citizens in the danger zone some time to prepare.
Dr Robertson, also speaking at the weekend’s panel, said: “Our classic thinking of Soufriere was that it either had diffusive eruptions or it had explosive eruptions, and that there was some relation between them, often it would have an explosive eruption and then somewhere in between you have an effusive eruption and then one in next one goes to explodes.
“What’s happening now we think is slightly different, it’s similar to 1979 where there is some dome growth.”
Dr Robertson also said that the dome growth has been growing significantly since they started focusing on it late last year and that the current Soufriere volcano has several domes inside of the current one that is growing at the peak now that people are seeing.
There has still been no evacuation order from the SVG government.