VOLCANO IS BOSSMAN – 2005

'Volcano is boss man' SPECIAL REPORT

MARK MEREDITH

Sunday, August 14th 2005

Visiting scientists look down in awe at the devastation wreaked on Montserrat's capital, Plymouth, by the mud and pyroclastic flows of the volcano.

"It came upon us very suddenly one night- July 18th 1995. It sounded in Plymouth as though a big jet was landing. It was roaring."

-Erica Gibbs, Montserrat resident

Ten years after its Soufriere Hills Volcano erupted changing the island of Montserrat forever, Montserratians who remain in, or wish to return home, or who are forced to return, face dilemmas and challenges far greater than any Caribbean hurricane has so far inflicted.

MARK MEREDITH continues his account of his visit to Montserrat.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, over 31,000 Caribbean people have perished beneath scalding volcanic pyroclastic flows, gaseous surges and lahars (mud flows); nearly all of them on two terrible days in 1902.

On May 7 that year, the Soufriere volcano in St Vincent erupted killing 1,500 people. The next day in Martinique, the Mont Pelée volcano overlooking the smart capital of St Pierre, the "Paris of the Antilles", exploded without warning incinerating 30,000 inhabitants in a couple of minutes. Only two people in the town survived. By comparison, all the hurricanes in the Caribbean since 1900 have claimed roughly 26,000 lives.

Worldwide, millions of people are affected by active volcanoes, or could be. It is claimed that nine per cent of the planet's population live next to them. In the Caribbean arc of fire -the necklace of volcanic islands stretching from Grenada to Saba-there are "more than 15 volcanoes that could become active", according to the Montserrat Volcano Observatory (MVO).

There have been many eruptions in the Lesser Antilles since 1900, but no volcano has displayed the protracted and cruel refusal of Montserrat's Soufriere Hills to go back to sleep. "It's not behaving itself," said one expert of the mountain that devoured 19 people and a country's future. Ten years and counting, and the impacts of the ongoing volcano crisis are inescapable in this tiny British Overseas Territory (16 km long and 10 km wide).

MVO Director Dr Sue Loughlin is, arguably, the most important person in Montserrat.

Everyone from the British Governor and Foreign Office, to the Executive Council of the Montserrat Government and, especially, anyone living south of the Centre Hills-the mountain barrier that shields the north from the volcano-listens when she has something to say; or they should.

Her team, including scientists from the British Geological Survey and University of the West Indies Seismic Research Unit in Trinidad, have their observatory just inside the "safe zone", high above Salem and the deadly lahars of the devastated Belham River Valley.

From here they look directly upon the volcano, measuring its every convulsion with state of the art equipment: lasers that read its bowel movements and instruments that gauge its breath, such as the 500-600 tonnes of sulphur dioxide the volcano dumps into the environment on any given day. They tramp into the perilous "unsafe zone" to place and read their instruments.

In Brades' Pentecostal church, Dr Loughlin attempted to allay the concerns of anxious Montserratians at a public meeting on the economic impacts of the crisis, arranged to coincide with the "Soufriere Hills Volcano-10 Years on...Scientific Conference". The chairman of the meeting asked if it was safe to continue living in Montserrat, or whether he should move to Birmingham.

Loughlin wished she could truly tell them that the volcano would stop misbehaving and not erupt again. But she couldn't. Admitting they "didn't really understand" the volcano, she tried to reassure them: "It is possible to live and develop beside an active volcano.

Millions of people do it all over the world."

Some Montserratians may have swallowed that with a large pinch of ash-that very night, while they slept, the volcano spewed tonnes of the fine dust into Montserrat's "safe zone" in the north, turning hills, homes and gardens grey.

I asked a Jamaican-one of many dierent Caribbean nationals working in the Tropical Mansion Suites, Montserrat's new and only hotel north of the ash-enveloped Vue Point Hotel-what she thought of living near such a volcano. She reached into her handbag and withdrew an open airline ticket and her passport.

Since the beginning of the year, the MVO has recorded continuous volcanic activity. There have been recent ash venting events, and "small" 20,000-foot plumes, numerous earthquake "swarms" (many quakes close together or overlapping), volcano-tectonic earthquakes, "jet engine sounds", elevated sulphur dioxide flux and "smelt on neighbouring islands", and a pyroclastic flow in the Tar River Valley in June. The volcano "hasn't gone away", nor have the social, economic and political impacts.

Today in Montserrat, according to its Chief Minister John Osborne, there are just 17 square kilometres of land space left in which to develop their country all over again.

Everything that really mattered in Montserrat lay south of the pointed peaks of the beautiful and protective Centre Hills: most of the people; the capital Plymouth and seat of Government; farms on the best agricultural land, and the fishing grounds; the economic mainstay of villa tourism, and growing cruise ship arrivals; a medical school responsible for 30 per cent of the island's entire GDP; and the real estate, rice-milling and electronics industries-like the landscape, the economy was laid waste.

In contrast, the north was an under-developed and sparsely populated area. Here, there are no fertile contours sweeping gently down to the sea, but sheer cli faces and hills plunging to the ocean, with a sprinkling of sheltered bays.

Future housing will depend on steep slopes and bluffs, and the north can feel exposed.

The vegetation is scrubby compared to the exuberant rainforest further south, and the soil seemingly good for stubby grasses and goats. The new airport has limited passenger and cargo-carrying capacity and is prone to closing for bad weather or ash. It is also said by critics to be the worst location of five choices available.

It is here in the north that most people live now. In 1997, the population had dropped to just 2,726 people from over 10,000 in 1995, though (like the economy) it has recovered somewhat to about 4,500 today. It was argued at Brades that this figure was nowhere near enough to sustain the regeneration of their country; the population needed to exceed pre-volcanic levels for economic success.

But how to attract these people back, employ them, and where to house them were questions raised by the man who was Governor at the height of the crisis, Frank Savage.

Montserrat's money comes from Britain-250 million pounds since 1995, it is claimed by critics, who wonder what the country really has to show for it.

The Department For International Development is responsible for dispensing the British aid budget among its 16 Overseas Territories. From 1995 when the volcano erupted and up to the height of the crisis in 1997, two-thirds of the aid budget went to Montserrat.

Savage was on the platform at Brades, a meeting which opened a can of volcanic worms feasting on a diet of colonial "irresponsibility", mismanagement, bureaucracy, an economic nose-dive and social neglect.

Montserrat's Chief Minister John Osborne, who has an election pending, was in the audience. He stood up. He "had to say something".

Osborne claimed Britain wasn't doing enough; they could do much better, a message he wanted Savage to convey to London. He said Britain's treasury chief Gordon Brown could write a cheque for all Montserrat's needs "with the stroke of his pen". He "felt really ashamed" when he saw the level of development in the French departments of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Even Tahiti, a mere French overseas territory, could boast golden staircases in their "beautiful" public buildings. In contrast, Osborne's office and the entire apparatus of Montserrat's government, including the police headquarters and the Governor's building, sits in what looks like an elaborate trailer park set on an exposed bluff in Brades.

Just down the road, under their noses, is a reminder of one of the greatest tragedies of Montserrat's volcano crisis-the scattering of its people far and wide, like ash on the wind.

There is a "new diaspora" at large: the Montserratian nation exiled by circumstance to the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Antigua and other Caribbean islands, or relocated to new housing units in the north of the island. In the US, 292 Montserratians currently face eviction, blown back to Montserrat, or to Britain, or somewhere else new, again. The reason? They were granted "Temporary Protected Status" in the US-but now it's decided the volcano crisis is permanent, "temporary" no longer applies, and they must leave.

Ten years on, there are still people living in run-down shelters in Montserrat. The trauma and stress, especially for relocated older people, has led to an increase in their death rate, I was told by the island's former Chief Medical Officer Dr Gordon Avery. It is said that being forced to exchange a life enriched by tropical gardens and togetherness for austere

apartment blocks in drab east London has proved too much for some elderly people, who have given up the ghost also. Avery warned of a rise in drug and alcohol abuse, and increased, unprotected sex among the youth of Montserrat-trapped between unemployment and the temptations of exile.

We went to the shelters with Donaldson Romeo, a portrait artist, journalist, hardware store-owner and passionate campaigner for the rights of displaced Montserratians at home and abroad. Old men idled their time away among the pre-fabricated metal boxes, labelled "Gift of the British People", avoiding our camera. Inside it was hot, stuy and smelly, with plywood partitions and small windows with sheets, towels or cardboard for curtains. Romeo told me up to 900 Montserratians were awaiting "decent, permanent housing". Each home would cost just £8,000 to build, he said.

Debra Barnes Jones, the current Governor of Montserrat and the first female Governor in British history, admitted the housing situation was "not as I would like to see it", and told me 60 new homes would be built at Lookout from November. She stressed the need for private investment in Montserrat to "complement government initiatives". The "north was safe", scientists having studied "worst case scenarios", she said. It was "on that basis that we are encouraging investment".

However, as Montserrat politician and poet Howard Fergus once wrote of nature's fearsome weaponry: "But volcano is boss man, only one in its class...."

- The first part of this report was carried in last week's Sunday Express