This past summer Montserrat, the 40-square-mile British colony in the Leeward Islands of the eastern Caribbean, was devastated by the eruption of its Soufrière Hills volcano. It first began spitting steam and ash on July 18, 1995; over the next two years it swelled, trembled violently, and began to explode. It gasped out ash plumes that rose above 40,000 feet before blanketing the island, and it sent pyroclastic flows—burning streams of volcanic rock, ash, and gas—flying down its flanks. Finally, on June 25, Soufrière Hills unleashed a particularly massive pyroclastic flow that devastated nine villages and killed at least ten people, with nine more missing and presumed dead. In early August, more flows virtually destroyed the capital, Plymouth, which lies near the foot of the volcano in the southern part of the island.
By September local authorities had declared the southern two-thirds of Montserrat off-limits, and more than half of ...
