Kingstown – One of the scientists monitoring the La Soufriere volcano, which began erupting effusively one week ago, says residents should remain on high alert, but not panic about the situation.
“In summary, you may have to remain at a high [alert] level for a long time. You need to keep listening out, you don’t have to get overly concerned . . . . What you need to do is that if the volcano goes explosive, essentially, we need to move off the mountain for a certain period of time until it gets rid of all that explosion. And then at some point, you may be able to come back,” Richard Robertson, a geologist, said during an interview on local radio over the weekend.
Robertson, is among a team of specialists from the Seismic Research Unit at the University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine campus in Trinidad and Tobago that has been dispatched to help monitor the volcano.
“Good or bad, the effusive part in Soufriere has often gone on for longer than the explosive part. So it may go on for a little while and so people need to sort of be prepared for a longer haul – a few weeks, at least, of this going on and, therefore, being at a high level of alert. But don’t get complacent, don’t get overly panicky about the situation but just be prepared . . . .”
Emergency management officials have been using aircraft to monitor the growth of a new dome, which was discovered last Tuesday in the volcano that last erupted in 1979.
The 1979 event, an explosive eruption that took place on April 13, Good Friday, is said to have resulted in the evacuation of 20 000 people from North Leeward and North Windward.
No lives were lost as a consequence of that eruption.
NEMO said that Robertson and his team have continued work to upgrade the volcano monitoring system.
A webcam monitoring system was installed at Rose Hall to constantly monitor the summit of the volcano. A data centre was also established at the observatory at Belmont to analyse the data collected from the volcano.
The information collected so far has shown that there is a new dome growing next to the 1979 dome, located inside the huge crater at the 4 048 foot-high volcano.
“The growth of the small dome has continued. It seems that it started out at a particular rate, and it’s slightly increased over the days since it started,” Robertson said.
“Once effusion starts at Soufriere, it can continue for several weeks, months and . . . in the case of this 71-72 dome, it went down to a little over a year,” he said, referring to the effusive eruption 50 years ago.
He said that his team is monitoring to give authorities as much time as possible, should an evacuation order be necessary.
According to NEMO, the alert level remains at orange – the second highest on the four-colour chart, with red, being the highest.
With an orange alert, residents north of Belle Isle and Georgetown have to be prepared to evacuate at a moment’s notice, as an explosive eruption could occur within 24 hours. (CMC)
