SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – Authorities on the eastern Caribbean island of San Vicente said Thursday they believe an active volcano is in danger of erupting and have ordered mandatory evacuations.
The island’s emergency management office changed the alert level to red and said a Royal Caribbean cruise will arrive after night to evacuate those living near La Soufriere volcano. Others will be taken to shelters in other places in Sant Vicenç that are outside the danger zone.
About 16,000 people live in the red zone and will have to be evacuated, Erouscilla Joseph, director of the Seismic Research Center at the University of the West Indies, told The Associated Press.
The pandemic could hamper evacuation efforts.
Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said at a news conference that people should be vaccinated if they go aboard a cruise ship or are granted temporary refuge on other nearby islands.
Gonsalves said he was talking to other Caribbean governments to accept people’s ID cards if they don’t have a passport.
“This is an emergency situation and everyone understands it,” he said.
Gonsalves added that he recommends that those who choose to go to a shelter in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, an island chain of more than 100,000 people, be vaccinated.
Joseph said emergency management teams have gone to red zone communities and provided transportation to safer places, including pre-established shelters.
“They know who has no transportation because all of this has already been checked before,” he said, adding that those embarking on the cruise would not be moved anywhere else, but would remain there for an unspecified period of time.
Government officials tweeted that the dome of the volcano located in the northern region of the island could be seen glowing at night. The alert issued on Wednesday evening follows days of seismic activity in the vicinity of La Soufrière.
Scientists alerted the government to a possible eruption after noticing a specific type of seismic activity at 3 a.m. Thursday that indicated “the magma was moving near the surface,” Joseph said.
“Things are climbing pretty fast,” he said of the volcanic activity, adding that it was impossible to provide an accurate forecast of what could happen in the next few hours or days.
A team from the seismic center arrived in Sant Vicenç at the end of December after the volcano erupted. They have been analyzing the formation of a new volcanic dome, changes in the crater lake, seismic activity and gas emissions, among other things.
The volcano last erupted in 1979 and a previous eruption in 1902 killed some 1,600 people.