Word: volcanoe
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...teacher and student sit cross-legged, facing each other on the floor of the open-sided hut in Western Samoa. Behind them the rain forest rises to the pinnacle of a long-dormant volcano. Beneath the thatched roof, a gaggle of children intently watches the proceedings. The teacher is Salome Isofea, 30, a young healer who is demonstrating her art. The man opposite her, a Westerner named Paul Alan Cox, is no ordinary student. He is a botany professor and dean at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, a world specialist in medicinal plants and, far from least in this...
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...
...three sons, he reluctantly boarded a ferry bound for Antigua, heading for London and an uncertain future. "I don't know what I will do when I get there," he said. "But the only choice I have is to put my best foot forward." There's no fighting the volcano. All the people of Montserrat...