Vincentians are being urged not to hike up to La Soufriere. The advice has come from Professor Richard Robertson, head of the La Soufriere monitoring team.
Robertson has warned that the dangers have been compounded by recent rainfall.
“I think people can see—you don’t even have to go on the volcano to see the effects of the rains; you saw it in South Rivers, you saw it in Arnos Vale. So you can imagine in areas where you have more sediment. If you have the same amount of rain, you’re going to have more potentially dangerous waters coming through.
So you need to stay out of the areas which could be flooded, which could be affected by rains; so the valleys, low lying areas, if you have showers, especially on the volcano, you need to stay out of them”.
Robertson said the volcano’s summit is not a safe place to go hiking because apart from the fact that you might have hot spots in the volcano itself, it is a dangerous hike to get up there because of the nature of the terrain.
Professor Robertson said the La Soufriere volcano is continuing the pattern that is indicative of a volcano that has ended its eruptive phase.
“Well, activity is virtually continuing in the same pattern, where we’re having a few small earthquakes, nothing near what we used to have since the explosions. SO2 numbers are still between 250 and 350, so, still coming down. So that’s it, other than that, there’s very little activity.” Robertson said.
