by Richard Nyberg

17 February 2003

Plymouth, Montserrat: I'm a software engineer and I was assigned to work at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory. I feel very lucky; at last I have the real feeling of doing something meaningful. Here is how it all started:

I arrive on the island and a scientist is waiting for me at the port. As we drive towards to the observatory I realize that Montserrat is a village and I ask where the centre is. There is no centre -- the houses, many still under construction, are scattered throughout the north. Most of the infrastructure seems to be temporary and unfinished... lots of shelters and just a few people around. The island is almost too quiet.

After a couple of days on the island, I experience my first volcano awakening. The seismograph pen starts clipping and shows a continuous tremor near the volcano, most likely caused by heavy rain. A scientist invites me for a field trip to check what is happening from a little closer since the remote digital cameras show no visibility. Once in the Belham Valley, which has since been proclaimed a high-risk area, we could see a mudflow rushing down to the sea, supposedly from the volcano flank. Rocks, mud and trees cascade down in a heavy soup. In the restricted area some goats trying to escape from the running waters -- nothing too alarming, though. A heavier rain could trigger a volcanic dome collapse but then the rain season is almost over, we'll probably need to wait until June. If a big collapse occurred now, people could probably go back to their homes in the valley and stay there for another six months or more until the dome builds up again.

Back to the observatory, we don't have to wait long before seeing the volcano puffing hard and spewing avalanches of hot rocks, called pyroclastic flows. At the top of the dome, a spine appears now and then hidden by the ash cloud. The pyroclastic flows are happening towards the East, creating in their way huge scary mushrooms of very hot convecting ash on the flanks of the Soufriere Hills. They looked big to me but the event was not alarming and is a quite common for the Montserratians and the scientists. I guess you adapt and forget about it after a while. I understood things could turn rapidly quite serious over here, though. As the gruesome cloud traveled to the north-west, the ash started quietly to cover the hills turning the tropical green color into white and gray. Closer to the flank you can see the remains vegetation, naked dead trees. Soon some of the ash will fall gently on us like snow and then a whitish milky rain starts, making a kind of funny little white spots all over my clothes. As the cloud formed by the mushroom expanded and fell into ash and rain, the volcano becomes silent. Only a few rocks would fall from the dome now. The show seems to be over but soon with the sunset, we can see a stunning fluorescent orange and pink plume rising up 2,000 metres against a beautiful light blue sky and a shiny rain forest in the foreground. To the west, close to Richmond Hill, I can see the remains of the old capital Plymouth -- lunar, abandoned, buried by mudflows and ash. We can hear some birds again.

Later in the night, I can see the dome glowing. The night comes early and some Montserratians from Salem hang out at the "Desert Storm" bar (named ironically after the war). They have the best view of the volcano, but they are so used to it that they often don’t bother to stop and watch. I'm back home and I'm still thinking about this first experience... the rain is falling hard so I wonder if the dome is going to collapse. A dome collapse is another story. In the middle of the night I wake up and step outside to enjoy the quietness and I smell sulfur dioxide; that reminds me that the volcano is only about eight kilometres away. The wind must be blowing towards the north. I can hear the waves breaking on the shore and sometimes the avalanches of rocks falling from the dome. Too tired, I'm going to sleep again looking forward to the next day of work...

When I arrived in Montserrat in October 2002, the island had already experienced several serious volcano crises. It all started in 1996 when Montserratians had to evacuate their homes to live in improvised tents, at friends or with relatives, hoping to see their homes again. For many, it never happened, so they had to leave for good. A lot of them are still hanging on. Selassie, a mid-fifties Rastafarian, told me that life in Montserrat was like a permanent honeymoon under the volcano.

It is a beautiful island, a quiet life but an active volcano -- a paradise that Montserratians don't want to leave because of the "lady". The dome is still growing. According to the scientists, it is bigger that has ever been. It's more than a year and half since the last collapse. And now it threatens to collapse any time, or it may not happen at all. Evacuate or not evacuate, assessing the risk day after day, is a difficult task for the scientists. As the risk grew, a new exclusion zone was proclaimed just a month before the beginning of my assignment. Montserratians had to leave their homes again and wait … patiently. The Montserratians are holding on.