Thousands ordered out of northern red zone, including second-largest town

Vincentians began a mandatory mass evacuation from the north of the island late Thursday as they brace for an imminent explosion of the La Soufrière volcano with neighbouring Prime Minister Mia Mottley pledging Barbados’ support and mobilising humanitarian resources.

Cruise ships berthed at Bridgetown, 159 kilometres (99 miles) to the east, have been pressed into action with one already steaming towards the island, as volcanologists warn that the volcano could blow within the next day or two, while memories of misery and the rain of ash return from a 42-year slumber.

Vehicles snaked bumper to bumper along the Windward Highway as night fell, as thousands streamed out of the Red Zone that accounts for roughly a third of the mainland.

But PM Mottley told journalists it was still “too early” to specify the nature of the assistance to the CARICOM multi-island nation.

The PM said she had already spoken with Vincentian counterpart Dr Ralph Gonsalves and Bridgetown will continue to engage and cooperate with Kingstown on the way forward during its time of need.

She said: “It’s too early…rest assured that Barbados will remain engaged. I think that you have seen where difficult times occur, we are not the kind of people to run from a difficult situation, we stand up and we are counted.

“At this stage, it is still too early to assess. As you know, the mere fact that we have already been cooperating with them, with helping them procure the ships and helping them put other arrangements in place and working with our regional institutions.”

“And it is times like this that we really recognize the value of regional institutions like CDEMA, [Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency] like the RSS [Regional Security System], with the pandemic, like CARPHA [Caribbean Public Health Agency]… without these entities, where will we be as a region, because our countries simply don’t have the individual capacity to do a lot of the things that need to be done.

“Suffice it to say, I know that the reason why they are asking the cruise ships to come is to be able to facilitate the accommodation of persons who have to be evacuated. Until we know exactly what’s happening with the volcano it really is too early to speculate…but suffice it to say we are guided by the right principles and we are guided by the right motivation and we are brothers and sisters in the Caribbean.”

Ships of the Royal Caribbean and Carnival Cruise Corporation line which had been berthed at Carlisle Bay waters over the last few months have been asked to join the evacuation effort with one ship expected to arrive in Kingstown Thursday night, said Mottley.

At Kingstown, hundreds boarded ferries which often see daily traffic to the nine publicly open ward islands of the Grenadines, including Bequia, Union and Canouan. Others reportedly headed for the island’s closest neighbour, St Lucia, 76 km (47 miles) to the north.

“The same cruise ships we had in our waters off our shores for the last few months, when I spoke to Michael Bailey of Royal Caribbean and the Minister of Tourism has been speaking to officers of Carnival Cruise Corporation as well, we were very happy that they immediately responded to Prime Minister Gonsalves’ request and therefore I think that the public is already aware that the first ship should arrive in the waters of St Vincent and the Grenadines tonight, with more coming tomorrow,” she said.

Earlier, Dr Gonsalves issued a mandatory evacuation order for all residents in the island’s northeast and northwest. The red zone covers such areas as the northernmost village of Fancy and south along the Windward coast to Owia, Sandy Bay, Overland, Orange Hill and the island’s second-largest town of Georgetown, population 1,680.

Not only were residents in these villages ordered to leave their homes but people, vessels and vehicles are banned from entering the exclusion zone except to help with the evacuation.

The National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO) has raised the alert level to red, which means that an explosive eruption of the volcano is imminent.

“At this point, we cannot say for sure and cannot give any further clear warning that nothing will happen within the next 24 to 48 hours…. There is no further warning we expect and therefore to guarantee safety of people… it is best to take certain decisions,” Professor Richard Robertson of the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre said in an emergency online briefing Thursday afternoon.

The Vincentian volcanologist said the last period of tremors at the volcano was accompanied by periods of gas venting and a “significant pulsing of the volcano, which appears as if… the volcano is trying to clear its throat…”

Professor Robertson told reporters: “Right now, we would not be surprised for example, if sometime within the next 24 to 48 hours, there are explosions from the volcano that are much more significant than we have seen so far. The pulsing is one thing, but explosions are different. So, we seem to be clearly heading into something that is explosive, and therefore need to take necessary actions to safeguard life and limb.”

The Vincentian Prime Minister has also reached out to Venezuela, St Lucia and Cuba to assist with possible evacuees.

Here, the head of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Association of Barbados, Noel Adams, told Barbados TODAY that Vincentians are concerned but not panicking, over the possible imminent eruption.

The volcano, which has seen an increased level of activity over previous weeks with several small quakes being detected on site, caused an even higher sense of urgency on Thursday after monitoring stations detected four different low-level quakes, which are known to be caused by fresh magma trying to reach the surface.

Adams said the situation on the island was indeed a worrying one, but not an unusual one for some Vincentians.

“Most Vincentians would have gotten accustomed to [activity in the past]; I do not think they have much fear, they expect that at some point it may or may not erupt, so they remain cautious. Many of them have made preparations in terms of any evacuations [ordered] and so on,” he explained.

Adams also said, that his association has already begun preparations in the event of an eruption, with supplies having already been sourced over the last several days.

“We here in Barbados have been putting items aside for when we need to assist; so we are able to pack barrels and send there if we have to, and if by chance any Vincentians have to fly out and come to Barbados, there are also preparations in place for us to assist them,” Adams added.

He stressed that though Vincentians are not ones to overreact to grave situations, the ones he had spoken with revealed that their biggest fear right now, was that the volcano could erupt in the middle of the night, while most of them are asleep.

“I think their biggest concern right now, is that they are afraid one night they will wake up and hear that it has erupted. In terms of fear they don’t have that currently, they are still going about their normal business, [but] those people who live in the at-risk areas right now, have mostly been taking their preparations [for evacuation] seriously.”

The La Soufrière volcano has had a strong effect on Barbados’ earth and sky twice in the 20th Century.

The volcano began to erupt on 13 April 1979 after 10 months of unrest. A towering ash cloud from the island’s highest summit of 1,234 m (4,049 ft), darkened the afternoon sky here followed by days of fine black dust showering the island. The eruption continued for another two weeks before finally settling two months later. There were no casualties.

Generations of Barbadians have been treated to tales of “May dust” that rained over the island in 1902, the deadliest eruption that killed as many people as Georgetown’s current population and decimated the island’s Carib community in northern St Vincent.

In an ironic twist, the volcanic ash has twice proved a boon to the fertility of nutrient-starved soils here.

But Thursday night, thoughts of thousands across several Eastern Caribbean countries turned to the fate of the Windward Island’s people, forced to leave a third of their homeland.
(emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb)/(SB)