Four years on from the volcanic eruption which buried large areas of Montserrat, David Hanington asks how the remaining islanders are preparing for the future.

There is a famous tourist attraction on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, a watering-hole which no self-respecting visitor would willingly pass by. They call it Runaway Ghaut (pronounced “gut”). At times it is a torrent; at others – such as in the present dry spell on the island – scarcely more than a trickle.

Local legend has it that anyone who drinks the water from this roadside stream is bound to return to the island. There is an official sign to that effect, and so it must be true. But now, scattered all round the world, there is a diaspora of Montserratians who wonder if the water of Runaway Ghaut has lost its magic. Will they ever return to Montserrat? Indeed, how much of Montserrat will be left to come back to?

I, myself, am one of those refugees. I spent huge, happy chunks of my childhood on this enchanted island, whose verdant greenness and its citizens’ relaxed approach to life (as well as its colonisation by Irish Catholic planters fleeing from Protestant persecution in nearby St. Kitts) earned it the nickname “the Emerald Isle”. All that changed, savagely and irrevocably, in 1996 and 1997, when eruptions from the long-dormant Soufriere volcano turned this paradise into Hell on earth.

The volcano had a cataclysmic effect on Montserrat’s economy, its topography, and its future. It overran huge tracts of land in the south and west of the island, which have become effective “no-go” exclusion zones. The entire main town of Plymouth was buried beneath a choking shroud of volcanic ash and rock, in parts more than 20 feet deep. Shops, offices, homes, the new hospital – all were swallowed whole. Farmers’ fields, plantations, even forests were left resembling a lunar landscape. The dock was destroyed, as was most of the airport infrastructure. The tourist business – the island’s lifeblood – was wiped out.

Montserrat, like other Caribbean islands, is no stranger to hazardous forces of nature. For centuries, its population has had to cope with earthquakes and batten down the shutters in the face of hurricanes. One of the cruellest ironies in the present situation is that

As a result of the eruption, two-thirds of the island’s land mass is now off limits. The Montserrat Tourist Board puts an optimistic spin on the calamity by describing the island as “39 square miles – and still growing”, on account of new deltas being formed by lava spilling into the sea.

Another potentially ruinous consequence is the loss of two-thirds of the island’s population, especially the young. At the height of the emergency, many were left without jobs or homes, and were evacuated to neighbouring islands or to the UK. Instead of a population of 11,000, less than 5,000 remain on Montserrat.

If there is some slight consolation in the face of such adversity, it may be found in the response which has come in the form of aid, technical help and personnel, sent to help rebuild Montserrat’s shattered infrastructure. As one of the UK’s Overseas Territories, Montserrat has a first call on the aid programme, and the British Government has contributed £140 million in assistance since the start of the crisis in 1995, with a further £55 million pledged over the next three years. In round figures, this amounts to nearly £50,000 for each of the island’s remaining residents. And while no-one – certainly not the country’s more radical politicians – pretends that this has solved all their problems, the effect of the investment is plain to see. Electricity and water supplies have been installed, port and road development is underway, and a heliport provides the only air access at present.

I recently returned to Montserrat, to witness for myself the havoc which the volcano has wreaked on people’s property and lives – among them members of my own family. While there, I was given the opportunity to see at first hand the measures which the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Montserrat Government, working together, are taking to avoid and counteract the damage which another disaster – be it hurricane, earthquake or volcano – would bring.

“Disaster preparedness” are buzzwords which social scientists are wont to bandy around at international conferences. But for the citizens of Montserrat, they stand for matters of life and death. Everyone remembers the date of 25 June 1997. That was the day the volcano blew its top – or, to be more accurate, its side – releasing a terrifying torrent of super-heated magma, ash and rock which ripped through villages on the eastern side of the island, faster than an express train. It destroyed everything in its path: cattle, crops and houses. Nineteen people also died that day, after returning to the exclusion zone against the authorities’ advice.

The deaths rocked the island community – and concentrated the minds of the authorities. The Soufriere was no longer a mere inconvenience. It was a killer. The Montserrat Volcano Observatory (MVO), which had been set up after the mountain’s first ominous rumblings six years ago, became the vital focus of everyone’s attention, as it monitored the volcano’s activity. It has remained so ever since.

The MVO scientists (a director, a seismologist and two vulcanologists), together with a team of technicians and assistants, keep a constant watch on the volcano. They notify the civilian authorities of every move the mountain makes. They are at the cutting edge of disaster preparedness.

Dr Rickie Herd, one of the British vulcanologists who has been on island since 1996 and knows the mountain better than most, explained: “We’re not in the predicting business. It isn’t possible to say: we’re going to have such-and-such a volcanic event at 2pm tomorrow. What we can do is keep it under close observation. That gives us a pretty good idea of the way the volcano is at the moment, and whether there is likely to be imminent danger.”

The MVO has installed a series of remote-controlled seismic stations, powered by solar panels and car batteries, dotted around the island. They “broadcast” any seismic activity back to the observatory, minute by minute, day after day, and daily reports and advice are passed on to the local radio station, ZJB. At the time of my tour in April, the situation was calm. The seismograph’s scribblings read like the ripples on a pond. But that can change.

According to Dr Herd: “There have been occasions in the past when the volcano has started to go into a really bizarre cycle. At the peaks of these cycles we’ve had explosions. And then there’s not much warning you can give folks. All you can say is: Look, this situation is upon us. Keep clear.”

The good news is that, for the moment, the volcano has quietened down. But it is still active, and could reactivate at any time, so the scientists don’t relax their vigilance. They carry out ongoing ground deformation studies: plotting the profile of the mountain and the growth of the dome itself by global positioning system, using satellites which can detect any changes to the volcano’s shape within a few centimetres.

They also rely on gas and environmental monitoring. I joined them on their regular daily helicopter run, using Cospec (correlation spectrometer) techniques to fly beneath the smoky ‘plume’ of the volcano, and measure the amount of sulphur dioxide being emitted. This helicopter trip gave me a vivid bird’s eye view of the scale of the disaster.

As boys, for a picnic treat, we would sometimes trek through the rainforests on the south-west side of the island. Our destination then was the Great Alps waterfall, a place of dramatic beauty: alive with lizards, sometimes monkeys, and the rare and unforgettable glimpse of the island’s special bird, the Montserrat oriole.

I looked down on it now from the vantage point of the MVO helicopter. I could see no forest, no waterfall, no sign of life whatsoever. The volcano had emptied itself over this once-lovely landscape. All that remained was a grey-brown slurry of boulders and ash. It was time to move on.

And Montserrat is moving on. On a practical level, DFID has funded a new cliff-top housing estate in the north – enigmatically called Lookout. In total, £19 million has been committed for new housing for those who stayed on the island. More assistance, in keeping with a recently-devised housing strategy, is planned this year. It is estimated that eventually a quarter of the country’s population will be housed in and around the Lookout area.

There is a new harbour, cut out of the rocks in Little Bay; a strategic fuel depot, with enough petrol, diesel and cooking gas to last for two months, should the island’s supplies be cut off by hurricane or some other disaster. There are plans for a new DFID/EU-funded airstrip – though not without some heated debate about the most suitable site for this vital facility.

There is also an impressive new Emergency Control Centre, the very last word in disaster preparedness. It has its own stand-by generator and water supply. The master plan is that, if in future a hurricane hits, the island’s key personnel – including the Governor and the Chief Minister – can use the building to direct emergency operations. The island may also be equipped, in due course, with a storage facility for vital emergency supplies: everything from fridges, tents and mattresses to large sheets of heavy duty polythene to serve as replacements for roofs blown off in the hurricane.

John Wall, who saw his family business – which had been four generations in the making – disappear beneath the ash, and his own home destroyed, summed it up by saying: “This island was made by a volcano. It lent it to us for a while. Now it has decided to take it back. We used to be a small island. Now we’ll have to get used to being a very small island.”

In the come-hither slogans of the tourist brochures, Montserrat used to describe itself as: “The way the Caribbean used to be.” Geologically, a large part of it has returned to being exactly that: a lump of volcanic rock rising out of the turquoise sea. But for the island and its people, all is not lost. They will rebuild, re-plant, recover. With help and a fair wind (and, please, not too many gale-force ones), they will overcome.

David Hanington is a freelance journalist and TV producer. Born in Tobago, he spent his childhood on the islands of Antigua and Montserrat.

Images © Rob Huibers/Panos Pictures