EVERYONE A HERO —2005

Everyone a hero MARK MEREDITH visits Montserrat ten years after its volcano erupted

Sunday, August 7th 2005

The very active Soufriere Hills Volcano in Montserrat venting ash, as viewed from the buried capital of Plymouth.

To appreciate better what has been happening to the island of Montserrat since July 18, 1995, imagine for a moment it is Tobago, a British Overseas Territory: its capital, Plymouth, becomes Scarborough, and between Bethel and Mason Hall sits the active Soufriere Hills Volcano.

Ten years after the volcano snarled to life with a "phreatic" eruption of steam and ash, Scarborough is entombed and approximately two thirds of Tobago remains uninhabitable and a restricted zone. The capital and its port, the airport, the tourism infrastructure, the villas, hotels, homes, coastal and hillside villages, fishing areas and the best agricultural land are buried by mud and pyroclastic flows, or abandoned.

Draw a rough line from Roxborough to Parlatuvier through the mountains of Main Ridge and relocate the remaining third of the emigration-decimated population from the crowded south to the lonely, underdeveloped north above that line. Then, start the development of your island all over again, wholly dependent on aid, not from gas-based Trinidadian largesse, but from your distant "mother country" thousands of miles away, with much else on its mind.

While, against this background, the volcano continues to rumble, darkening the day with ash and uncertainty, turning familiar green hills grey, and the world's expert scientists and vulcanologists cannot truly tell you whether or not it will vent its full fury again.

If you had the choice to make, would you stay in, or return to, Tobago in such circumstances? How would you rate the resilience of your people in overcoming the environmental, economic and social incineration the Soufriere Hills Volcano delivered?

Its destructive power is an awesome sight to behold, but so is the resilience of Montserratians. "Everyone's a hero, or heroine," said the former British Governor Frank Savage of those who stayed or returned.

Savage was addressing a public meeting in Brades' Pentecostal church on the economic impacts of the crisis, organised to coincide with the "Soufriere Hills Volcano - 10 Years On...Scientific Conference" in Montserrat from July 24 to 30.

When the volcano blew in 1995, Frank Savage was the Governor.

I met him by chance a few days after the Brades meeting on a cold pyroclastic flow (an avalanche of high-temperature volcanic debris usually formed when the lava dome collapses and which can travel up to 250 metres a second) in the Tar River Valley near Trants and the W.H. Bramble Airport the volcano destroyed. It nearly had him, too.

Savage arrived on the very last flight with his wife Veronica. Minutes later, airport sta and Montserrat Volcano Observatory (MVO) scientists evacuated the east coast airport. "We came through the door of the terminal lounge to see this enormous pyroclastic flow rolling down the hillside . . . there was no mistaking this was the real thing," Savage recounts in journalist Polly Pattullo's excellent account of the Montserrat tragedy, "Fire From The Mountain".

All that can be seen of the airport today is the very end of the runway, painted white stripes on black tarmac disappearing under a vast blanket of grey and brown volcanic detritus and mud, studded with the odd clump of stubborn greenery. The desolation stretches away along the east coast and up the slopes and steep vanished valleys ("ghauts") where rural communities once lived and farmed: in

Trants, Bethel, Bramble, Harris, Farells Yard, Long Ground and Streatham, all the way to the smoking, ashing mountain above us.

It must have been a beautiful place for a small, national airport; a striking contrast to the new airstrip at Geralds which opened in the north last month and where we arrived. That sits unnervingly between two steep hills at high altitude on a structure that looks from the road like an oversized golf course tee box, and which involves a surprisingly steep, unsettling descent for arriving passengers. The flight path of the Win Air dornier aircraft was just over and to the right of Montserrat's only hotel in the "safe zone". It buzzed my bedroom at 7 a.m. everyday. We took the ferry back to Antigua.

On the day Savage and hundreds of Montserratians cheated death - June 25, 1997 - nineteen Montserratians were burned alive in the scalding flows and gaseous surges. Most died in the vicinity of the Tar River Valley where we stood, a restricted area which, I have since discovered, was coated with new pyroclastic flows just four weeks before. I knew I felt uneasy for good reason.

I didn't know then of the Governor's escape from the area he was revisiting.

Beneath his battered sun-hat his fair skin was reddened from the scorching day and if he was nervous in this lonely, ominous place he didn't show it, chatting easily. He hoped Montserratians in exile could return home to join the remaining 4,500, but they would need jobs and housing before they could do so. He clearly believes in Montserrat and Montserratians' ability and resolve to overcome their

ongoing calamity - but with more support; something I had already begun to understand.

The day before, we had witnessed the disruptive effects of "ashing" on daily lives.

During the night there was an "explosion" in the volcano, venting ash northwards over "safe zone" areas. It was like waking up after a snowfall to find a world transformed: sounds and colours muted, but by fine, drab dust swirling behind vehicles cutting visibility to yards; adults and children walking the streets with masks; everyone scraping, sweeping, hosing the ash from roads, roofs, cars and gardens. And, as they cleaned, the wind would gust and the ash would swirl again.

In Salem we met elderly Claris Skerrit, a bandana wrapped around her face, brushing piles of ash from the driveway and grey garden of her pretty home.

Resident in England for 35 years, she had returned to her home of Montserrat only for the volcano to welcome her back with ten years of misery. It's now too much for her.

"I thought it had gone quiet," she lamented, referring to the volcano's recent ash venting eruptions. "I have to pay to clean my roof. Looks like I'll have to move again. This ash, I can't cope with it."

Down the road at the Vue Point Hotel, venue of the scientific conference, the ash seemed centimetres deep. The Vue Point directly overlooks the volcano and the Belham River Valley which demarcates entry into the "unsafe zone". One delegate told me this ash fall was a small event, as though the volcano had "swallowed a bad shrimp".

Previously, it has belched loudly with satisfaction, showering volcanic rocks on houses, spreading ash many inches thick, collapsing roofs.

Dr Gordon Avery, Montserrat's former Chief Medical Officer (1998-2000), explained that the ash was a serious health risk to those with asthma and respiratory problems. "Prolonged heavy exposure has the potential for causing silicosis and possibly lung cancer," he warned.

The ash contains dangerous silicosis-linked crystobalite, "a particularly fine particle". He wasn't so sure about Salem and environs, but was of the opinion the north of Montserrat was safe, as it rarely and only lightly suffered ashing-but it was enough to close Geralds Airport two days later.

Looking towards the smoking Soufriere Hills Volcano over the ash-coated chalets and grey lawns to the mud flows of the Belham River Valley and its buried golf course, it was as though the mountain was mocking the scientists huddled in the air-conditioned conference room. "Deliberate all you like," it seemed to be saying, burping ash clouds for their benefit on its birthday.

The conference, organised by the MVO and the Seismic Research Unit of the University of the West Indies in St Augustine, drew over 100 scientists, geologists and vulcanologists from all over the world. Much has been learned about the volcano in the last ten years, but not enough to know if it will erupt again with the devastation it has already displayed. The last six weeks of ash venting were similar

in nature to 1995, but no new lava dome has been detected. However, they know it isn't asleep, which we discovered first-hand.

You cannot go to Plymouth unless the police let you, or you are part of a field trip of scientists or on a MVO tour. To get there you must cross the Belham River Valley, a "dangerous place" we and the scientists were told, subject to "lahars", torrents of mud and debris brought down the mountain by rain. The bridge is buried two metres below and one must drive across a wasteland of dried mud, ash, boulders and dead trees.

Once across and up the ashy road to St George's Hill and the view of Plymouth, the smart villas of Corks Hill lie boarded up under their dusty blanket. The volcano looms above the road, smoking. We park and walk to the viewpoint. Below us, upscale villas of Richmond Hill lie abandoned but, astonishingly, some people wish to return to them.

Nothing I've ever seen compares to the view from St George's Hill. It's enough to make the eyes water, and not because of the ash. We stood high above enormous pyroclastic flows and lahars sweeping downhill, like a tsunami of volcanic vomit, spreading out to the sea, engulfing Plymouth; what was left of Plymouth, which wasn't very much. Central Plymouth had disappeared entirely, and, on either side, roofs and broken buildings poked up above the Soufriere Hills' deadly discharge.

On the ground at Plymouth, picking through the bones of the "Caribbean Pompeii", the silence, sulphur and desolation of the ruined capital are suocatingly poignant.

Standing at the top of a church steeple, or crouching next to the clock just beneath the roof of the courthouse (that stopped at seven minutes past 12), there's no escaping the sense of loss and the monster responsible.

As for the volcano, it had grown weary of scientists, journalists and cameramen picking over its prize, and told us so. It exploded, somewhere in its bowels, and the black ash rose up and out of its ugly mouth and down the slope towards us, sending us anxiously packing as grit stung our faces and sulphur shortened our breath.

- To be continued next Sunday