Eruptions Could Overwhelm Montserrat, Scientists Say

The Soufriere Hills volcano on the British island of Montserrat in the Caribbean could soon erupt violently enough to overwhelm the entire 7-by-11-mile territory, scientists now believe.

And a British Cabinet minister, declaring that a cataclysmic eruption cannot be ruled out, announced Monday that a voluntary evacuation of the island’s 4,000 remaining residents will begin by ferry this week.

As a result of the eruptions, which began two years ago and have become progressively more violent, 28 people are dead or missing; the capital, Plymouth, has burned; and a majority of the island’s 11,000 inhabitants have fled.

“Further explosions may take place with little or no warning,� said a daily report issued Monday by international scientists monitoring the volcano from an observatory several miles away. “They may be more intense and longer lasting than those already experienced.�

The work of the scientific team on Montserrat--about a dozen Trinidadians, Britons and Americans--represents one of the most comprehensive monitorings of a single volcano ever undertaken. Their findings are available in a series of reports available on the Internet at https://www.geo.mtu.edu/volcanoes/west.indies/soufriere/govt/

Soufriere Hills had not stirred for 300 years until periodic swarms of earthquakes began in 1897. The eruptions began in July 1995 as a series of steam blasts that hardly disturbed life in the capital only two miles away.

In April 1996, the mountain spewed a mixture of superheated rocks and gas, leading to a permanent evacuation of Plymouth.

In September 1996, the first explosion of molten rock occurred. A plume of smoke soared 40,000 feet into the air, dropping 600,000 tons of ash on the southern part of the island.

Since then, scientists report, volcanic flows have filled in the crater and nearby canyons. And the direction of the flows has turned from east to north and west, toward the remaining populated areas.

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Meanwhile, earthquakes have become more frequent and longer lasting. Although the temblors, some of which go on for hours, have not been violent, they signal that molten materials continue to move up into the volcano from deep underground, presaging violent eruptions.

On June 25, there were massive explosions that killed at least nine people; 19 missing people, all in zones that had been ordered evacuated, still have not been found.

The flows from those eruptions came within half a mile of Montserrat’s airport, which has been closed since.

This month, the disaster intensified with more eruptions that burned most of the empty capital. Ash in some parts of the city is 30 feet deep, according to helicopter surveillance reports.

Previous eruptions in the Lesser Antilles, the chain of islands stretching from southeast of Puerto Rico to South America and including Montserrat, have been catastrophic. An explosion from Mt. Pelee on the French island of Martinique killed about 30,000 people in 1902.