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The Montserrat Volcano Disaster Streetphotos and words from the unusual G. Mark Smith streetphoto journal; Molten Memoirs: Essays, Rumors, Field Notes and Photographs from the Edge of Fury (1999/ East Village Pac-A-Lunch Productions). * August 27, 1997 “The Department of State recommends that US citizens defer all travel to the eastern Caribbean island of Montserrat. The Soufriere Hills volcano, at the southern tip of the island, has erupted several times since late June and is responsible for a number of deaths. Seismic experts predict more violent eruptions that could endanger the island. Residents (except for a few volcano holdouts) are concentrated in the northern designated safety zone. This area is overcrowded with limited resources.” |
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The scientists explain that the ravines, or “ghauts,” which previously channeled the deadly pyroclastic flows down predictable drainage routes, have been largely eliminated, filled up with volcanic debris and material, and that there is therefore less restriction on where or how far future flows might travel to the northwest. In particular, the scientists refer to Farrell’s plain above the Belham Valley, a once fertile farming area that is now buried by an elevated level of debris that is predicted to funnel future flows toward Salem. * "(But) the Salem holdouts are saying there is nowhere else to go on the island and that leaving Montserrat is not an option," said a staff officer at Governor Anthony Abbot's office. “At the moment the emphasis is on persuasion and every measure you can think of is being used to persuade the people of Salem to leave," the staff officer said. In late June of this year, the volcano claimed its first lives when flows of super-heated gases, ash and rocks devastated seven villages in the vicinity of Salem. The unofficial death toll is 19 and the latest activity has virtually wiped out the abandoned Capitol, Plymouth. The destroyer HMS Liverpool has been standing offshore in case a mass evacuation of all of Montserrat becomes necessary. Scientists report that visual observations confirm that there is a large overhanging mass above Gages Valley which appears highly unstable. The instability and volume of dome material means that the probability of further larger and more violent collapse episodes remains relatively high. Large pyroclastic flows generated on either the northern (Gages) and western side of the overhanging dome are likely to reach the Belham Valley. The (super-hot) surge component of these flows could reach Salem. Such flows and surges usually occur without warning. In addition to generation of large pyroclastic flows, vulcanian explosions could also occur. If an explosion occurs, rocks and ash can fall anywhere on the island at high velocity. People should seek shelter under a strong roof as soon as possible. Helmets or other head protection should be used and it should be remembered that ash and falling rocks also make driving hazardous. The volcano is in a highly dangerous state and everyone still in the exclusion zone is encouraged to move north as quickly as possible. Those remaining in that area do so at great risk to themselves and others. If Sirens sound, move north at once or to higher ground immediately, taking a hard hat or a couch cushion for protection from falling clasts. Continue to wear safety helmets and face masks at all times island wide. All Montserratians are advised to keep their radios tuned to Radio Montserrat for up-to-the-minute details about the deteriorating activity of the volcano |
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*
As I approached the edges of what once was drainage through Plymouth but had become a pyroclastic river, the "bad" area was apparent and stunning. The buildings (houses?, shops?, government buildings?, too far gone to tell) became scattered with shards of rubble flagging former neighboring properties, the spaces in between flattened by 1000-degree pyroclastic that I had been warned could still be up to 400-degrees hot only a foot or two below the crust. Still fired from the last flow that came this far down this gulch last month, before the newest dome established its cap and the pressure began building. Structures that have chanced to remain standing are heavily pitted. The grounds were littered with rocks and pumice from bowling ball size to the size of an airport van. And they were all over the landscape. I was careful to step (the Kilauea earth crack experience flashed through my mind), and I came upon an area at the border of the "fair" and "bad" areas, and accessible to a great medium-format Hassleblad view of a lot of the brutal elements of this change. A surviving concrete section of the last building on a disappeared street with truck-sized boulders either thrown there from the volcano or pushed there by pyroclastic flows and piling up at the former building's reception area. In the background, the pyroclastic river swath a quarter mile wide. Total and absolute destruction. Flows that vaporized or covered everything and which had built the valley up to a flat plain that will surely widen the destruction of future flows. Above that, more abandoned houses under surviving palm trees with the classic stratovolcanic cone of dormant Chances Peak that shaped modern Plymouth during past eruptions tens of hundreds of years ago visually
reminding the viewer what caused the desolation in the foreground. The new Soufriere Hills dome to the right and slightly back from Chances Peak, unseen or seen as light smudge of steaming ash activity because of the constant haze around it and the clouds forming about the heat. I was in a rarefied spot and I used several minutes choosing the frame on the photograph, as I could go no farther than that without wading out into the flow scar, still being careful with every step while setting up so as not to cave through the crust. I finally had the frame set and ---- ---- ---- there was a "thud" ---- ---- ---- from about a mile or two away from me toward the gray ash smudge at the bulging top of the volcano. That smudge in the Hassleblad frame suddenly became an advancing dark gray and black boiling torrent of eruption debris rushing at my viewfinder from the upper right toward the lower left. It was a dream to have seen it from where I stood and to have been coincidentally prepared to make that image, but now it was time to run for my life... |
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I’d made it nearly to the end of the delta when I sickeningly broke through up to my upper thigh and was caught, and for a few moments I was in a madness of panic to stop from sinking deeper, but all that did was sink me deeper. It was like my impression of the workings of quicksand, like having your leg caught in a vat of dry cement powder, so fine and yet so dense and entrapping. My high-top basketball shoe wouldn't come off, but after twenty seconds I again experienced the relief of alarming warmth leveling off to a non-lethal one. So I dusted a surprising 3 to 5 inches of ash that had accumulated in an astoundingly short time off of my camera bag and I calmed down by making a 35-mm image with my Canon of my desolate position and the unbelievably barren and assaulted landscape that I was engulfed in and which at that moment shared my predicament. Then I calmly spent half a minute hand digging my way through the warm muck and out of my mess and then I immediately continued fleeing to the speedboat that I hoped would still be there. After climbing several eight and ten-foot fences in a bound (such was the height of the drifted and compacted ash at the shore), I made it to the docks ---- and the speedboat was gone.
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* Pyroclastic Flow? The most dangerous and deadly of volcanic hazards, a pyroclastic flow is an incandescent heavier-than-air mixture of superheated (about 1000 degrees F) gases and exploded volcanic fragments whose loose packing and internal motion keep the mixture fluidized. Glowing white, it rushes rapidly down volcano valleys by gravity (about 100 mph) like a low-viscosity fluid (mercury), burning and boiling any living thing in its path and collapsing or severely pitting buildings and infrastructure. After losing speed and fluidization, it dumps its fragments into dense pyroclastic deposits of super-hot ash, debris boulders, and dry pumice fragments that smother the land and fill in valleys and hollows to instantaneously form a lifeless flat gray plain. |
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I finished my bank business at Woodlands and reworked myself around a more serious defense force checkpoint than I’d weaseled past all week. More serious since the weekend events, politics, and warnings. I got back to the cafe, and having missed breakfast, I’d just ordered an early lunch and was having a discussion with Kilimanjaro at the bar about Eric Clapton’s “guitar god status” ---- ---- ---- and suddenly, the dogs started barking wildly and Chicken Joe’s free-range chickens started squawking and someone on the street screamed “MOUNTAIN”---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- and I was about to get way more volcano than I’d bargained for...
10:46 a.m.
I was right near the open door and I stepped outside at once ---- ---- ---- and just about pissed my pants. The mountain I was on began exploding near the top, and although so much happened in the next few seconds, it seemed to progress in slow motion and to take much longer. It wasn’t quite as much of a time warp as when I fell off that ice cliff in Quebec, but it came close at times. The top of the mountain opened up and a column of exploded mountain, ash, pumice, and superheated explosive gases rose so fast and so high that it was as if someone had turned on a fire hose inside the mountain. The rising column dissipated and sucked the clouds into its vortex like a black hole must do to light. The first half mile of the eruption column was accompanied by volcanic missiles of some size that arced out with black smoke tracers and returned to earth or splashed into the sea in a two or three-kilometer vicinity of the peak. The shooting column rose incessantly and when it’s friction and heat hit the crucial height, the air around the column exploded with volcanic lightning, flashes that were not as much bolts as they were like huge momentary children’s sparklers. We could hear the mountain gushing and rumbling and the muffled bangs of repeated explosions, but in hindsight, it was much quieter (surrealistically quiet) up close than you’d think such a violent and huge thing should be. And then a small but rarely detectable earthquake shook us slightly for a moment or two. The eruption column accelerated in its undaunted rising and by then it had made it up to about two miles high, when we noticed the new distant sound of far-away jet engines. And then an incandescent white dot appeared two miles back down the eruption column near the dome, and it instantly dropped all our heads away from the column and the sparkling lightning overhead.
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* Even though the roar of the mountain and the reports of the thunder continued and grew a bit louder, the holdouts of Salem could hear nothing for the next minute or so except the beating of our own hearts in our throats. Even though I’d come to Montserrat of my own free will and was fully aware of the possibilities, and even though I felt the heat of yesterday’s flow as it oozed on the flats and into the sea, the thought of me being in the path of one of these barreling and boiling and tumbling killers sickened me. However terrible it was, the scene was also breathtakingly beautiful. To me, it was spiritually enlightening and was surely the object of my volcano quest. Yet it was rushing at me and overwhelming me and it was sure to kill me. I didn’t see how anyone could be ready for that kind of slap on the face, and there it came. I did not panic, but I was in despair. I thought I’d reached the end of the line. The incandescent glowing stream (usually too ground-hugging and low to photograph from a “safe” distance), grew longer and closer and I knew from its speed that it was too late to flee and I honestly thought then and for the next long minute or three that I was a dead photographer.
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The white hot flow was now at a size that was perfect for the 50-mm image I’d been preparing for all my life. At the same time, I was about to be incinerated by the subject of my last photos, and I squeezed my own quiet panic in as I prepared for the moment (I thought about Janet and the cats). Since it appeared I was going to die, I figured I might as well go down swinging. I made a shot of the pair as they broke apart a bit and as they refocused their attentions on the thing that was doing us all in ---- ---- ---- and then in an instant, the flow took an unmistakable turn toward the western shore. The man’s right arm shot up in joyful hope, and I also made that photograph, as the ten of us on that street instantaneously cheered in a chorus. I was happy because I knew I had just photographically raised the bar on any of those other great moments I’d captured on Saturday or Sunday as part of my mission. And now the deadly 1000-degree ground hurricane had turned down another valley where nobody lives anymore. However, the sickening 400-degree gray surge of ash and suffocating gas already airborne (the thing the scientist’s said would kill us) didn’t turn and it kept barreling and boiling and tumbling right toward us, disappearing the incandescent flow behind it with its curtain of debris and heat.
The surge continued to assault, but eventually did stop, but so close to the broken front door of my tent we could all (one way or another) feel the heat of it. As the black wall of the surge loomed in front of us dangerously close to burning Salem, Kilimanjaro exclaimed to no one in particular “That’s it! Too close for me! I’m outa-here!” He turned his back on the near miss and he began to walk north with a purpose. And then there were less than 100 holdouts in Salem, pacing around, arms folded and thinking about tomorrow again. On his way out of town Kilimanjaro looked up and pointed directly above our heads. I made that photo and I followed his point and also re-focused on the eruption column, which had leveled off in the high-altitude winds at 12,000 to 20,000 feet and had mushroomed out from the volcano and had expanded its front past Salem in width and was directly over our heads. The column was big, so impressively huge, that I could only capture a slice of it with my camera. I was too close. |
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* Holdouts Flee Salem Three eastern villages in Montserrat were devastated by huge flows of super- heated rock and gases which swept down the northeastern flanks of the Soufriere Hills volcano this weekend and the volcano has exploded three times since yesterday, scientists and government officials said Monday. The flows devastated three kilometers of land and destroyed all remaining buildings and properties in the unoccupied eastern villages of Tuitts, Bethel and Spanish Point. Government spokesman Richard Aspin said that the latest flows also ripped through the main terminal at the island's abandoned airport. In the meantime, the authorities are concentrating their efforts on removing stubborn Salem residents who remain in the unsafe zone closest to the active volcano and tonight they have reported some success.
Despite the occasional but regular spells of terror and intimidating daily and nightly reminders of their destiny, residents in some areas threatened by the volcano had been reluctant to leave the comfort of their property for cramped conditions in shelters in the island's north.
But authorities have told CANA that some of the residents who had previously refused to leave have, given the increased gravity of the volcano, decided to cooperate and many are now leaving voluntarily. |
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* Alfred called to me from the windows of the restaurant at 5:00 a.m. as I’d asked him to do, but I ended up not needing the wake-up call after all. I’d given up on sleep at about 3:30 a.m. and packed the tent and the rest of what I was bringing home with me into my backpack. I spent the night trying unsuccessfully to believe all I'd seen and photographed since Saturday. I wasn't just counting it all up in my mind in an attempt to fall asleep or to feed my obsession. I was obsessing in order to deflect the ghastly death that I knew (even better than I did yesterday) might swoop down on me at any moment from the upper valley or from the sky above. I'd give in to the images in my mind and get out of the tent and sit on my dusty plastic garden chair on the dusty Eric Clapton stage unable to stop wondering about the next few hours. I'd bug out completely and I'd go pacing up and down South Salem Road between the Golden Arches and Desert Storm for a break from my anxiety, where there were always others just like me. Standing there, arms folded, gazing into the black un-exploding darkness low to the southeast. Considering the possibilities. Hoping for the best. Me counting my hours, minute by minute. The rest counting the number of eruptions they've seen and "wouldn't it be nice to see another." Or, "I hope the next one doesn’t burn up my house up there." Or, “What will I do now?” |
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* * We bounced passed the villa that the Austrians rented and were probably still asleep in. On the island they had gotten a reputation during the week as very late sleepers (their maid gossiped to Alfred, who told me, who of course was sure to let them know about it). They said it was an undeserved rap-sheet of sloth and that they hoped to dispel it by promising to see me and Alfred off at the early ferry. The refugee truck, now very low to the ground and carrying three in the cab and three hanging onto the top of a full load of bouncing evacuation boxes, slipped through St. Peter’s and Cudjoehead and it wound its way down to Little Bay. The docks and customs sheds were already teaming with passengers purchasing tickets, clearing customs, and getting ready the mounds of possessions they hoped to flee with. All of them getting set to board a ferry that would take them ‘round the corner of Antigua 27 miles away by boat and then for many by jet to London... _________________
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