On the Island of St. Vincent, W.I., at about 5:00 A.M. on Good Friday, April 13, 1979, I was awakened by a disturbance in the chicken coop at the bottom of the garden. I thought a mongoose was after my chickens and so I got dressed and hurried down to investigate. The chickens were frightened by something but it was not a mongoose. I looked up at the sky and saw a huge, black, mushroom shaped cloud churning menacingly upward over the entire Island. At that moment, my wife shouted down to me from the bedroom window that the radio was annoucing that the Island's volcano, 4000 ft. Mt. Soufriere, was erupting. The chickens had been frightened by the tremor caused when the top of the mountain exploded in a deadly plume of hot gases, ash, and molten rock.
The eruption caused a panic across the island. People were quickly evacuated from the sparsely populated north to the south. Doom-sayers made much of the fact that it was Friday the 13th and they were certain that doom was going to strike and there was nothing one could do to avert it. The rumor mill soon made it known that the island was going to break into pieces and sink into the sea taking with it all the inhabitants.
Where does one go to escape an erupting volcano when you are living on an island that is only 130 sq. miles in size. Where indeed! The airport was the first choice but it was soon impossible to get a seat on any plane leaving the island. The Grenadines, a chain of 32 small islands belonging to St. Vincent offered a way of escape if you knew people living on them. The larger ones, Bequia, Mustique, Canaouan and Union soon had every bed and breakfast or larger tourist accomodations fully occupied. For those not having a place to flee to, it was a tense waiting game.
A second eruption happened that same day, two more on April 14th, and then increasingly smaller eruptions on the 17th, 22nd, and 25th of the month. Mercifully, no lives were lost but the north end of the island was devastated. What saved the day for the south was the trade winds blowing most of the ash out to sea and the molten lava flow running down the west flank of the mountain into the ocean instead of inland.
The last major eruption on April 25th affected the south end of the island was well as the north. There were no trade winds blowing that night. It was midnight and we heard the 'boom' of the eruption and felt the house tremble as the mountain roared to life for one last blast. We could hear the sound of cinders ( reminded me of hailstones) falling on the tin roof and we began to be apprehensive that what the people had been fearing most was about to happen.
At daybreak, we opened our windows and dared to look out. There was not a blade of green grass to be seen. The roofs of the houses, the roads, and the gardens were covered in a thick layer of gray ash. In the air was the smell of burning sulphur. When we turned on the tap to get water for making a much needed cup of tea, the water coming out was black.
About a month later, we drove up north to view the damage. We knew people living in Chateaubelair just a few miles south of Soufriere. The further north we drove, we began to see what the hot gases from the volcano had done to the vegetation. Tall, stately coconut palms were bent over double from the heat. The leaves of the banana trees had turned black as if they had been hit by a killer frost. Nutmeg and clove trees lost their leaves but eventually recovered to produce once more their valuable spices. It was a economic disaster for St. Vincent since they depended heavily on the export of their bananas. However, there was a silver lining in the dark cloud hanging over the island: volcanic ash is a marvellous fertilizer and a year later that ash revitalized the crops on the entire island.
Mild volcanic activity continued for about five months before Soufriere (sulphur in French) went dormant again. I still have a vial of ash and a rock the size of a clenched fist as souvenirs from that day which Vincentians now call Black Friday!
View of Mt. Soufriere
Credit: picture and map from Wikipedia
