My name is Susan Loughlin and I'm a geologist at the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh.
I worked at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory from May 1997 through till 1999. My job there was to help with the monitoring and to help with public education and all the other work that's done at the Volcano Observatory.The role of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory is to monitor the volcano and recognise the hazards posed by it. They also communicate with the Civil Officials who then decide on acceptable levels of risk and organise hazard mitigation and organise evacuations if necessary.
The monitoring data that the Montserrat Volcano Observatory collect is used for research, both at the MVO itself and also in universities and laboratories world wide. The MVO began just in 1995 in response to the first phreatic explosions at the volcano. It was staffed by scientists from the Caribbean, from America and from Britain initially, and over the years scientists from all over the world have been involved. The Soufrière Hills Volcano first became active in 1995 following some seismic activity and the first sign of activity were phreatic explosions and this caused the first evacuations in the capital city, Plymouth. In the years following that there was a lava dome that grew gradually and continuously at the top of the volcano, generating pyroclastic flows that eventually spread in all directions around the volcano.
Unfortunately in June 1997 the volcano claimed it's first victims after a pyroclastic flow rushed down the north side of the volcano and impacted villages there. During August, September and October of 1997 there were a series of explosions. These explosions generated ash clouds that travelled thousands of feet up into the air and some of them affected air traffic. At the end of 1997 was the largest event where a huge collapse wiped out villages in the south west of the island and had a devastating effect on the whole of the south west area. The lava dome stopped growing in March 1998 and everyone hoped that this was the end of the eruption. For 20 months no new magma was extruded. However, in November 1999, a new lava dome began to grow. This grew for several months and then on the 20th of March 2000 a large part of it collapsed. However, lava dome growth did not stop and it's continuing right up until the present day.
Monitoring of the volcano takes place 24 hours a day, every day of the year. We have seismic monitoring which measures vibrations in the earth. We have deformation monitoring which measures movements of the earth. We also make observations of the volcano and we monitor gas emissions.
Volcanologists forecast volcanic activity so they are very good at foreseeing hazards and looking at the areas that are most likely to be affected. Predicting an exact time and a place is very, very difficult, almost impossible. In order to forecast activity, volcanologists must maintain continuous monitoring of the volcano and must understand as much as possible about the volcano and its past activity.
