Life in the Hot Zone of Edgy Montserrat

ST. PETER'S, Montserrat — Sheppy Skerritt returns to the prohibited zone in his battered taxi from time to time to feed his two cats, which he left behind when eruptions of the Soufriere Hills volcano led to an evacuation order.

“There’s no room in our shelter for the cats,” Skerritt explained. “I get to feeling sorry for them, so I go back in.”

Skerritt and his wife live in the north end of Montserrat now and he scrapes by economically by guiding around the occasional visitor in his taxi. A somber man not given to emotional displays, he nonetheless makes it plain he will not leave the island willingly.

It hasn’t been too difficult for Montserrat residents to visit the prohibited zone, in plain view of the volcano, despite the fact that all 28 fatalities in the 2-year-old eruption involved people who were in the area illegally. The deadly flows also destroyed Montserrat’s airport and set its abandoned capital, Plymouth, aflame.

On the lone road connecting the remaining populace with these areas, there is only a flimsy barrier and a policeman who gently waves one through. During a recent stay on the 8-by-11-mile Caribbean island that saw three eruptions in four days, a steady stream of cars and small trucks passed by the barrier. The island’s largest supermarket remained open 100 yards beyond.

And one morning, at the scientific observatory whose twice-daily situational reports are broadcast on the local radio station, a gaily dressed young woman, who did not identify herself, said she still lives in the zone.

She came to the observatory to study the latest monitoring information. But she said it would be too inconvenient for her to leave her home, which the scientists have said a deadly pyroclastic flow could reach. “There’s no room for my furniture in the government shelter,” she said.

As she disappeared down the road, the manager of the observatory, E. Karney Osborne, said angrily, “She’s insane. . . . Doesn’t she realize she’s risking her life for a few sticks of furniture?”

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The island’s governor, British career diplomat Anthony Abbott, has been more ambivalent than Osborne. The government can set up a prohibited zone, he said, but it is up to residents to decide whether to observe it.

However, a week later, Abbott had second thoughts. He announced the government was contemplating fining anyone discovered in the zone $185.

Montserrat was “pretty well self-sufficient” before the eruption began, but since then, the British government has spent $68 million on support ranging from financing the observatory and building shelters to providing a moving subsidy for residents leaving the island altogether, Abbott said.

“Her majesty’s government is firmly committed to the viability of the north end of the island, as long as it’s safe to stay,” the governor said. “The numbers don’t matter.”

Still, this is a nervous time on Montserrat. Since no one, not even the scientists, can really know what the future of the eruption is, there is an uncertain mood on the island that affects nearly everyone.

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Having written about volcanoes for The Times for several years, but never having witnessed an eruption, I was eager to go to Montserrat--but also a little scared.

The British subsidize both the helicopter and ferry service over from Antigua, 25 miles away. I took the helicopter, which costs only $33, along with seven other passengers, all islanders returning home.

I had no sooner arrived when, standing on the ground beside the helicopter, someone said, “It’s erupting.” I turned and a brownish, billowing cloud was visible over a nearby hill that blocked a direct view of the volcano.

My first impression was that this was not too menacing. A British Cabinet minister had said in August that the volcano could overwhelm the whole island. In the presence of this eruption, it did not seem too likely.

Montserrat was never one of the Caribbean’s big tourist destinations, though it had many small inns and a few hotels. Now, all are covered with ash in the prohibited zone.

Finding accommodations proved easy. Skerritt greeted me as soon as I was through immigration and said he knew a lady who would take me in.

I got a room at the simple home of Margaret Molyneux and Joseph Edes, a few hundred feet above the Caribbean. There was a TV but no hot water, and sometimes no running water at all, but the price was right.

Molyneux and Edes, elderly retired companions who take in occasional visitors for their livelihood, were more than friendly. He talked about leaving a safe with some money in it back in Plymouth, when he had to hurriedly evacuate his souvenir shop months before. He insisted on giving me several first-day issues of Montserrat stamps for my son.

The second night, Molyneux came to my room as I ate dinner to give me word of an eruption. Outside, a cloud noticeably darker than the night sky was punctuated with frequent short bolts of lightning. It seems eruptive clouds have an electrical charge; they cause their own lightning, and it is a spectacular sight.

But Edes was uneasy. “I’m staying here now,” he remarked. “But I’m leaving the island if this gets much worse.”

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From the home’s terrace during the two daylight eruptions, you could follow the ash clouds. Once, they trailed a long distance away from the island, 30 miles out across the sea toward Nevis and St. Kitts.

But one eruptive cloud dropped first pumice and then ash on the house. The pumice--light, tiny rocks--fell for just a few minutes although it took a couple of days to completely pick it out of my hair. The ash fell for several hours.

This was the rainy season, and it rains frequently enough to wash away most of the ash that has fallen in the north. There is too much ash and other debris on the devastated south end to wash away.

Skerritt and I were at the nearby local government offices when another eruption began. When we walked outside, a large group of people was staring toward the volcano.

A cloud was shooting up, eventually reaching 38,000 feet. But, someone assured me it wasn’t as black as some, so the ash fall would not be terribly heavy. Still, Skerritt put on the government-recommended ash mask that many Montserratians wear during eruptions. As a brief visitor, I skipped this precaution.

As we drove toward the prohibited zone to take a closer look, the pumice, some chunks almost as big as golf balls, began hitting the car. Skerritt quickly turned around.

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The Montserrat Volcano Observatory, established after the eruption, has had to move farther away from the volcano four separate times. Now it sits behind two small peaks that separate it from the volcano about four miles away. Unlike at its previous locations, Soufriere Hills cannot be seen.

It has been staffed by a variety of scientists, principally from Trinidad, Britain, France and the United States. The observatory’s chief scientist at the moment was Keith Rowley from Trinidad, the Caribbean’s only full-fledged volcanologist, and its assistant chief was Sue Loughlin from England.

Rowley said he had been on a boat inspecting the results of a particularly devastating eruption last summer when he came across the bodies of two people who had been caught in it.

“I was surprised at my own reaction,” he said. “I was surprised I didn’t react more. But I thought we had done everything we could. We had warned people daily that they should leave this area. They had the responsibility for staying in it, and we could not be blamed for their deaths.”

Loughlin noted that for a while the observatory itself was in the prohibited zone, within what was believed to be the range of a potential deadly flow of superheated material that could kill instantly. She said she had spent some restless nights and was relieved when the observatory moved farther away.

Montserrat has a weekly newspaper, present circulation 700, the Montserrat Reporter, edited by Bennette Roach, which is skeptical of some of the scientific warnings. For instance, Roach has written that he found out from encyclopedias that wearing an ash mask, as the scientists have persistently advised, is not necessary to prevent the lung disease silicosis, because it takes years to develop and the Soufriere Hills eruptions are only occasional.

And Roach, who at an earlier stage of the eruption criticized the government for halting cruise ship visits to the island, still says he feels the dangers of the volcano have been overstated.

Abbott recently had a talk with Roach and, the governor recounted, “What I said to Bennette was I wasn’t scared of the volcano, but I was respectful of it. That’s why these warnings are issued.” Still, he added, “I would never have any intention of imposing any kind of censorship or control on him. He is totally free to say what he likes.”

Loughlin was a little tougher on the newspaper editor. “What is he doing getting his information about the health dangers of volcanic ash from encyclopedias?” she asked scornfully.

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During my first 26 hours on Montserrat, there were three eruptions, but there were none during the subsequent 62 hours there. On my last afternoon there, Skerritt wanted to feed his cats and, my fears waning, we drove into the prohibited zone, where we got a closer look at the volcano.

It’s impossible to get very close, because the roads become covered with impassible debris. But we went by many homes covered with ash and saw the abandoned former site of the observatory.

The area is dilapidated, even though a few people are still living there. But it is clear that many of the homes, particularly those belonging to retired North Americans, were once quite fancy.

It was an unusually clear day. And then, around a bend, there was the volcano, perhaps two or three miles away, barren and awesome, looking quite menacing. No areas clean of ash there. A few rock falls occurred as we looked, throwing up some dust. But that was all.

The mountain was quiet. We took a few pictures and left, not too soon for me. Since pyroclastic flows move at about 150 miles an hour, right in front of the volcano seemed no place to be for long.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

There’s More to Come

Tourist guidebooks used to refer to Montserrat’s Soufriere Hills volcano as extinct. Then, on July 18, 1995, the volcano on the 38-square-mile island began erupting for the first time since Columbus’ discovery of the Americas.

Since then, a combination of dome-building and collapses, explosions and pyroclastic flows of a superheated combination of ash, rock and gas have devastated the southern two-thirds of the island, forcing the evacuation of inhabitants to the north end or off the island entirely.

Nine people died and the bodies of 19 others were never found following a pyroclastic flow June 25. In September and October, a total of 71 explosions sent ash and pumice raining over the island. Scientists advised the 4,000 people left on the island (from a population of 11,000) to carry hard hats and wear ash masks.

The volcano recently has been in another dome-building phase, and scientists warn that another round of dome collapses, explosions and pyroclastic flows seems in the offing.

Soufriere Hills is a subduction zone volcano in the Lesser Antilles island arc. To the east of the island chain, the North American tectonic plate is wedging, or subducting, under the Caribbean plate, causing the volcanism. There are 17 identified volcanoes in the chain, of which four have erupted in this century.