Gray on gray - a thick layer of ash covers the Caribbean island of St. Vincent.
The volcano La Soufrière was inactive for decades, now ten thousand people have had to flee their homes.
Kingstown - The Caribbean island of St. Vincent was covered by ash rain after the eruption of the La Soufrière volcano.
According to the local civil protection agency, the violent eruption on Friday raised 6,000-meter-high ash clouds into the sky, which reached as far as the south of the island.
Thousands of people were brought to safety.
At the weekend, the ash clouds also reached the neighboring island of Barbados.
There have been more explosive outbreaks in the past 24 hours, authorities reported on Wednesday (April 14).
There is still a red alert.
La Soufrière volcano - villages evacuated after eruption
The volcano La Soufrière in the north of St. Vincent erupted on Friday morning (2:41 p.m. CEST) for the first time in four decades.
On Saturday, the 110,000 residents of St. Vincent had a picture like in a "winter wonderland", wrote the news portal "News 784".
Everything was covered with whitish ash: streets, houses, official buildings.
In some areas the view is extremely restricted by the ash smog.
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Caribbean island of St. Vincent before and after the violent volcanic eruption.
© Satellite image © 2021 Maxar Technologies / AFP
After a volcanic eruption - airspace over the Caribbean island closed
The civil protection agency reported a strong smell of sulfur that reached as far as the capital Kingstown in the south of the island.
Vynette Frederick, a lawyer from Kingstown, spoke of a "deadly calm" in the capital.
“The mood is serious,” said the 44-year-old.
Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves spoke on NBC News on Saturday of "a huge mission" that was imminent on the island.
In large parts of the island, the water supply has been cut.
Because of the ash smog, the airspace in the entire country is also closed.
Around 3,000 people spent the night in emergency shelters.
Volcanic eruption on Caribbean island - thousands flee
Gonsalves' government had put the population on high alert on Thursday evening in anticipation of the outbreak.
16,000 people normally live in the greatest danger zone alone.
According to the authorities, most of them had already been brought to safety on Friday.
Gonsalves said on Saturday that his government was in talks with other countries willing to provide aid.
Guyana and Venezuela have promised to send aid ships to St. Vincent.
Meanwhile, the Caribbean Disaster Management Agency warned of health hazards from the ash rain.
Because of "thick ash clouds moving through the atmosphere," the people on the island of Barbados were called to stay in their homes, the agency said.
Hours after the first eruption on Friday morning, La Soufrière erupted again;
the volcano again spat out a 4,000-meter-high ash cloud.
The director of the Seismological Institute at the University of the West Indies, Erouscilla Joseph, spoke on Saturday evening (local time) of "further eruptions" during the day.
Further eruptions are to be expected.
La Soufriere volcano last erupted in 1979
The 1235 meter high volcano last erupted in 1979.
In its most violent eruption to date in 1902, more than a thousand people were killed.
La Soufrière is the highest mountain on the island.
The Caribbean state consists of the main island of St. Vincent and the 31 small Grenadine islands.
The area used to belong to the British colonial empire.
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(
afp)
List of rubric lists: © Satellite image © 2021 Maxar Technologies / AFP