SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – Decades of silent volcanoes are coming to life in the eastern Caribbean, prompting officials to issue warnings in Martinique and St. Vincent and the Grenadines as scientists rush in for activities to study which they say t observed in years.
The most recent warning was issued late Tuesday for La Soufriere volcano in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a chain of islands with more than 100,000 people. Officials reported tremors, strong gas emissions, the formation of a new volcanic dome and changes to the crater lake.
The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency said scientists on Tuesday observed an “exuberant eruption in the crater with visible gas and steam.”
The government warned those living near the volcano to prepare to evacuate if necessary, by issuing an orange warning, meaning eruptions could occur with less than 24 hours notice.
La Soufriere, located near the northern tip of the main island of St. Vincent, last erupted in 1979, and an earlier eruption in 1902 killed about 1,600 people. That happened shortly before Martinique’s Mt. Pelee erupted and devastated the city of Saint-Pierre, killing more than 30,000 people.
Mt. Pelee is now active again. In early December, officials in French Caribbean territory issued a yellow warning due to seismic activity under the mountain. It was the first warning of its kind issued since the last volcanic eruption in 1932, Fabrice Fontaine, with Martinique’s Volcanological and Seismological Observatory, told The Associated Press.
While the eastern Caribbean is a long chain of active and extinct volcanoes, volcanologist Erik Klemetti of Denison University in Ohio said the activity on Mt. Pelee and La Soufriere are not related.
“It’s not like a volcano starts to erupt that others will,” he said. “It falls into the category of coincidence.”
He said the activity is evidence that magma is lurking underground and seeping to the surface, though he added that scientists still don’t have a good understanding of what determines how quickly that happens.
“The answers are not entirely satisfactory,” he said. “Science is still being researched.”
Klemetti said the most active volcano in recent years in the eastern Caribbean is the Soufriere Hills in Montserrat, which has erupted continuously since 1995, destroyed the capital, Plymouth, and killed at least 19 people in 1997.
Seventeen of the 19 living volcanoes in the eastern Caribbean are located on 11 islands, the remaining two are underwater near Grenada Island, including one called Kick ‘Em Jenny that has been active in recent years.