Photos Capture the Unfolding Volcano Crisis in St. Vincent

The European Space Agency released satellite images on Friday captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission showing a before-and-after of the island blanketed in the ash cloud, with the red areas representing plant density. In the second image, much of the formerly red areas are now darkened by ash. NASA’s Earth Observatory is also tracking the ash plume from La Soufrière, which its Terra satellite measured at an altitude of 12 miles (20 km). Winds have carried ash and debris to islands near St. Vincent, including Barbados, Grenada, and Saint Lucia.

According to NASA, the ongoing explosion at La Soufrière has already caused between 0.4 and 0.6 teragrams of sulfur dioxide to be distributed in the upper atmosphere—more than any other Caribbean volcano on record. Some volcanic eruptions can have a cooling effect on the climate, as sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere can reflect radiation from the Sun back into space. The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, one of the largest eruptions in modern history, sent a 20-million-metric-ton cloud of sulfur dioxide more than 22 miles into the atmosphere, which made the planet around 0.7 degrees F cooler for the next three years. (The explosion also temporarily shifted rain patterns in Asia.) But, experts say, La Soufrière is unlikely to have this kind of impact: “The current thinking is that a volcano needs to inject at least 5 teragrams of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to have measurable climate impacts,” Michigan Tech volcanologist Simon Carn told NASA.

The La Soufrière eruption is creating an escalating a humanitarian crisis on the ground. While no casualties have been reported as a direct consequence of the explosion, thousands of people have been displaced and even more are affected across the island as the volcano has continued to rumble this week. The UN said Monday that the entire population of St. Vincent was left without clean water and electricity following Friday’s eruption, and officials say ash is continuing to contaminate water supplies. Meanwhile, a report issued by the World Health Organization and The Pan American Health Organization on Tuesday said that between 16,000 and 20,000 islanders were evacuated as a result of the explosion. More than 4,000 people were living in nearly 90 temporary shelters, and more than 2,000 said they were temporarily living with family and friends, the report said.

The coronavirus is complicating evacuations, especially since St. Vincent and the Grenadines is part of a large swath of the world that lacks access to vaccines, in what’s being dubbed a global “vaccine apartheid.” The country only got its first shipment of vaccines two days before the first volcanic eruption. Government officials say that they are worried the evacuations and ongoing devastation may cause a new spike in covid-19 cases on the island, especially given the water shortage.

And the crisis could keep dragging on. Experts say the volcano could keep erupting for weeks, and these eruption patterns are similar to the volcano’s 1902 eruption, which killed 1,600 people. Even after the volcano goes quiet, the ash could keep falling and recirculating around St. Vincent and neighboring islands.

“Unfortunately, the worst-case scenario is this can go on for weeks because of the changes and the dynamics of this system,” Erouscilla Joseph, director of the Seismic Research Centre, told NPR. “We have to keep monitoring the seismicity associated with the volcano and advise based on that.”