Word: volcano
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...week, a nerve-shattering siren reverberates across the island of Montserrat. It is an urgent warning for people to drop whatever they are doing and head north. But there is not much farther north to go, and the terror among local residents is palpable. The Caribbean island's volcano, belching, smoking, fuming for two years now, is giving hints of a cataclysmic blow, as the dark, telltale cloud of white-hot debris shoots high into the sky. "It's the first thing you see when you wake up and the last thing you see when you go to bed," says...
What happens when the siren sounds too late is evidenced by six mounds of freshly tilled soil adorned by simple wreaths. The graves contain the charred remains of local residents who perished on June 25, when the Soufriere Hills volcano spewed 150-m.p.h. molten rivers of lava, gas and ash down its flanks onto the villages below. As farmers tended to their carrot and cabbage fields, huge rocks showered on them and the scorching lava raced over the scalded ground. Ash-filled smoke plunged the land into darkness. There was nowhere to run. Nineteen people died, buried under tons...
After slumbering for four centuries, Montserrat's volcano awakened two years ago with a vengeance, gradually rendering all but a third of the 39-sq.-mi. British colony uninhabitable. Two-thirds of the population of 12,000 have fled, and thousands more have abandoned their homes, often with little but the clothes on their back, for overcrowded shelters in the comparatively safe northern region. Plymouth, the capital, has been reduced to rubble. The airport is closed, and the only access to the island is by ferry or helicopter...
Under the growing pressure of subterranean steam against the mountain's molten core, the volcano's cap could eventually blow out entirely. Montserrat, not much more than a slender arc of farm and beach land surrounding the volcano, could virtually disappear. More likely, the mountain may keep on belching for months or years, slowly smothering the little island. Already it is a paradise lost for its citizens as fewer than 4,000 cling to their homeland. "If everyone leaves," says Radio Montserrat general manager Rose Willock, who lost her home a month ago, "Montserrat will become just another island that...
...crisis has been woefully mishandled from the start. Though it has been two years since the volcano became an obvious threat, there has been no general announcement of what people should do in the event of an emergency evacuation. The government has not undertaken any significant construction of temporary housing, and some shelters were in areas now deemed unsafe. There has been plenty of finger pointing, but it is unclear where the blame for the current situation truly lies. Montserrat has its own elected local government, yet remains a British colony. And so, Montserratians argue, Britain has an obligation...