La Soufriere erupts, PM Gonsalves urge residents to leave red zone

SOURCE- CMC— La Soufriere volcano erupted shortly before noon on Wednesday hours after authorities urged persons defying evacuation orders were, to leave the Red Zone.

The eruption, for the sixth day in a row, came hours after Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves made an impassioned plea for persons to leave the red zone area as the volcano continues to erupt generating possibly pyroclastic density currents (PCDs).

Gonsalves, speaking on the state-owned NBC Radio said that there were still people residing in the area within the volcano who were still refusing to leave even as the authorities have sent the Coast Guard vessels and vehicles to get them out.

“Persons who have left elderly ones or persons who for one reason or the other do not want to come out the window is narrowing sharply and given the pyroclastic flows, for Heaven’s sake leave.

“If you are over in Fancy, or in Point or in Sandy Bay, wherever you are you get to Owia and somehow if we get to know and even the cycles, the pattern over these eruptions, the prospects of the pyroclastic flows, we have narrow windows.