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Brian Lehrer: Brain Lehrer on WNYC. Have you heard about the volcano? I know, with so many other things going on, maybe not. But our listeners whose roots are in St. Vincent or some other places in the Caribbean-- St. Vincent, if you don't know, is southeast of Puerto Rico. It's the biggest island in the Grenadines chain. Lots of people in the region are talking about this and being affected by it. It's the La Soufrière volcano on St. Vincent, and since last Friday, a week ago today, periodic eruptions have covered that island in ash, and flows of molten lava gush down the mountainside. Residents have been told to evacuate and are without clean water or electricity. It's unclear when the eruptions will stop, but the ensuing humanitarian crisis is not likely to be short-lived.

With me now, so this doesn't fall through the cracks, to talk about the science of the eruptions is Robert George Andrews, volcanologist turned science journalist. He writes about volcanoes for National Geographic, The New York Times, and other places, and in a few minutes, we'll be joined by a community organizer here in Brooklyn, working to get supplies to St. Vincent. Dr. Andrews, hello, and welcome to WNYC.

Robert George Andrews: Hey, thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take a few phone calls here too if you have a connection to St. Vincent. I know it's an island of only about-- I think the population is around 110,000 people. I think 110,000 people live on my block in New York City, so not that many people. If you are from St. Vincent, or have connections to St. Vincent, or anywhere else in the region being affected by this, give us a call and tell us what you're hearing, what people are seeing, experiencing, what they need. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Dr. Andrews, can you describe these eruptions and when they're happening, and what they look like?

Robert George Andrews: The eruption actually began back in December actually. It didn't really make the news because the eruption was really calm then. It was doing what this sort of volcano in this part of the world tends to do. It was ooze, this toothpaste-like mass of lava that just slowly grew into a dome-like shape, and then a really long slug-like shape in the summit of the volcano, which is on the northern side of the island. It was already erupting, but that kind of eruption isn't dangerous because it's not exploding or anything like that. All that's yet to be confirmed.

The working theory is that below this gloopy extrusion of old magma, there was this new magma coming up that was full of gas, and when you've got gloopy magma and a lot of trapped gas that can often lead to explosion. Since April the 9th or so last Friday, there's just been a series of massive explosions at the summit, some of which of course, pyroclastic flows, which are these superheated, super-fast avalanches of ash and gas that you cannot outrun. They can actually go uphill and bounce along the water, and all the while ash is just covering the whole island, to varying degrees sort of thing.

For the first few days of these explosions, the sun was almost invisible at points. It was this apocalyptic kind of darkness. It would have been just very psychologically in the least very scary. The latest is, that there are still explosions rocking the summit. There was a change in the activity yesterday, I think, or within the last 24 hours, where it looked like maybe it was about to calm down, but then there was another large explosion this morning. It'll probably continue for some time into the future.

Brian Lehrer: Has anyone been seriously hurt or killed by the eruptions themselves, or what else do you know, as a volcanologist, about the effect on the population?

Robert George Andrews: Amazingly, as of the latest count, no one has been killed by this eruption, which is a remarkable thing that's only been achieved, because scientists at the University of the West Indies, and on the island, and in the region, have been monitoring this volcano very carefully because it's got quite a violent reputation. Once that lava dome is starting to appear, they were listening very carefully, and in the days before the explosions began, on April the 9th, there were seismic signals that were linked to the movement of magma, the very sudden rush up of magma, and so they alerted the authorities and the authorities listened to the scientists, and they ordered an evacuation the day before.

That displaced up to 20,000, maybe 30,000 people in the north of the island. Probably because of that evacuation order, because the authorities listened to the scientists, they saved many lives. At the moment, no one has been killed, but the main problems is that these people had to suddenly evacuate to the south of the island or offshore, and they were only allowed on boats offshore if they had been vaccinated against COVID, and there's only one road down to the south so it was chaotic. The evacuation was still ongoing, as the eruption was happening, but still, no one has been killed. It's just there's power cuts, the water has been polluted by the ash. It's certainly a prolonged disaster, but the fact that no one's been killed is an impressive thing.

Brian Lehrer: Let me make sure I'm saying the name of the volcano right. It looks to me like the French and I'm not previously familiar with this volcano. La Soufrière, but I saw a pronouncer that said Soufrière. How do you say the name of the volcano?

Robert George Andrews: I've been told both, so I'm not 100% sure myself. I've been saying both so I'm not entirely sure. [crosstalk]

Brain: Let's bring in another guest who might know that as well as what's going on with people on St. Vincent. It's Nikkole Decaul. She's a community organizer here in Brooklyn working to get supplies to people on the island after these evacuations. She was born in the US and has family in the area, but not in the red or orange zones directly. Hi, Nikkole. I think if I'm not mistaken, you have family in the St. Vincent region.

Nikkole Decaul: Yes, I do.

Brian Lehrer: Welcome to WNYC. Are your family members safe as far as you know?

Nikkole Decaul: Yes, they are. They are safe.

Brian Lehrer: Good. What else is important to know right off the bat for people in our listening area?

Nikkole Decaul: That the evacuees right now, they can be up in shelters up until December. Right now, the organization that I'm working with, we're trying to get these items that we're collecting out as fast as possible because these people are really in need, and we need to do everything that we can to help the evacuees.

Brian Lehrer: During national disasters, it's sometimes more helpful to donate money, other times it's more helpful to donate supplies. You're asking for supplies. What are you asking for? What do people need?

Nikkole Decaul: We really do need the supplies more than the money, I feel, at this point, because the airports are closed, items are selling out in stores. We're trying to get people to give us items so that we can ship it out because when their items run out, they don't have anything to buy in stores, so we have to get everything down there. Right now, we need disposable cutlery, toilet paper, flashlights, you name it, we need it. They need everything right now.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we'll tell you how to make those donations in a couple of minutes, so you have time to get something to write with, but let's take a phone call right now from Melissa in Ocean Hill, Brooklyn, who says she has family in St. Vincent. Hi, Melissa. You're on WNYC.

Melissa: Hi, good morning. I just wanted to call both sides of my family from St. Vincent, although I have some living here, and I did not grow up there, but I've been checking in on my family chat and checking all the news via social media to get updates on how things are going. Talked to my grandmother and my aunt recently and the entire country is covered in ash. Water is an issue and I'm not sure if they've rectified that yet because they get their water from rivers and the rivers look like rivers of ash. Some of my family are trying to make it here. They can't do it via plane so they have to take a ship to another location and then fly out from there.

I did just recently donate with a company called Standard Shippers that have been around, I've been related to them at some point, who is collecting supplies, and they've shipped to St Vincent all my life, and I'm 42. These companies that regularly ship down there are taking donations, and we're sending everything from diapers, to formula, food, water. If anybody can donate, you can just drop by and they will ship it for free, and the owner's name is Festus York if anybody asks. There is a lot. They don't get regular shipments. We usually ship barrels to them for certain supplies but they're just extremely expensive on a regular basis, and so they need constant additional supplies from family members usually here.

Brian Lehrer: Melissa, thank you so much for that vivid description and all those details. Nikkole, undrinkable water that has turned to the color of ash from the volcano in the rivers that people use to get their drinking water. That's serious.

Nikkole Decaul: Yes, it is. It's really serious.

Brian Lehrer: Do you want to tell everybody, because they're probably primed to write down

some contact information for places where they can send supplies right now, make donations? What can you tell people if they want to help?

Nikkole Decaul: For more information, you guys can contact me at mondaymagicsvg@gmail.com. We can coordinate a time for you guys to drop off your goods. We're located at 4515 Avenue D in Brooklyn, New York.

Brian Lehrer: You want to give that email address again?

Nikkole Decaul: Sure. mondaymagic M-O-N-D-A-Y M-A-G-I-C svg@gmail.com. Monday Magic Experience is connected to Oxygen Mas, which is a leading Carnival organization in St. Vincent, that's working with these shelters to make sure that the evacuees get all the items that we're shipping down.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, Nikkole, how do you say the name of the volcano?

Nikkole Decaul: La Soufrière. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: On La Soufrière, Dr. Andrews for you as a volcanologist, you wrote recently, I see, that the volcano has a deadly reputation and history. There's something like 19 other live volcanoes in the Eastern Caribbean. Is there something that makes this one more active than many of the others?

Robin George Andrews: No, each volcano is its own persona, has its own personality. They all act in a slightly different way. This volcano isn't any more active in that sense than any of the others in the region. They can be quite dangerous. There was an eruption on Martinique and Mount Pelée in 1902, and it killed 30,000 people in an instant. This was before atomic weapons were a thing, so that must have been a horrific sight to see.

If essentially you have people living around volcanoes, there's always going to be some danger, but these volcanoes in this region, have the ability to switch between being quite calm to very, very explosive and dangerous very shortly. Scientists are actually still trying to work out why that is. It's not entirely clear why they can do that, but a lot of it's to do with how much gas gets trapped. So we have sticky magma, and you have a lot of gas trapped, and that gas can't easily escape. That's when you're more likely to get explosions. But why do they switch back and forth like that, it's an ongoing question.

Brian Lehrer: Teressa in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hello, Teressa.

Teressa: Hi, good morning, Brian. Thanks for everything. I have a donation that I have to mail to you. I am from the tiny island of Montserrat in the Caribbean. We were in London, England in 1995 on vacation, when the Soufrière Hills volcanoes started to erupt, and half of Montserrat is destroyed. It's like a modern-day Pompei. Ask your volcanologists about that. On top of that mountain, Chances Peak was a little pod, we used to call it Chances Pond. We never knew it was a crater lake. It's after the volcano erupted that we knew it was a crater lake.

Montserrat is a very tiny colony, British colony in the Caribbean that is called the Emerald Isle of the West. Is not a big island. It's very tiny. Now we're scattered all over. I have been living here since before the volcano, but ours started in 1995, and they went all the way back in the history of the island, and couldn't find any volcanic eruptions for over 300 years, but it's a very serious thing.

Another thing also too, is that the trauma of it caused the women that their menstrual periods came down, so we had to send a lot of sanitary pads down, a lot of diapers including other things to the island. I understand what the people of St. Vincent what they're going through.

Brian Lehrer: Teressa, thank you so much for that. Dr. Andrews, is that a history that you're familiar with at all in that case?

Robin George Andrews: Yes. The 1995 eruption of Montserrat actually was one of the first things I remember seeing about volcanoes as a child, basically on TV. Yes, it was absolutely devastating. It destroyed the capital city. There were pyroclastic flows that rushed down over the city and, again, people were largely evacuated once activity starts to ramp up, but this volcano also started with one of these lava domes, and then it just snapped into this explosive phase. The volcanoes in this part of the world can be extremely dangerous to the point where that like the city of Plymouth in this case on Montserrat is just like a ghost town now. It's a risky proposition when these things start erupting angrily.

Brian Lehrer: We just have a minute left in the segment. Nikkole, I wonder if you, as a community organizer in Brooklyn, are aware if the federal government of this country is doing anything with respect to volcano relief on St. Vincent. The whole premise of us doing this segment is that this has fallen through the cracks of the news in this country with so many other things going on even as serious a situation as now, our listeners are hearing that it is down there. Is this on Washington's radar if you happen to know?

Nikkole Decaul: I really don't think so. Actually, yes, I don't think so. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Dr. Andrews, anything from on that?

Robin George Andrews: No, I don't. I'm not aware of anything stateside-wise.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Nikkole, tell people one more time, how they can contribute supplies. I think it landed when we had Melissa's phone call with people in a visceral way, I'm guessing when she talked about what happened to some of the water supply, the drinking water supply down there, and that people are literally donating water to be flown down, or shipped down to the island. Tell people one more time how they can help.

Nikkole Decaul: You guys can contact me at mondaymagicsvg@gmail.com. That's M-O-N-D-A-Y, M-A-G-I-C svg@gmail.com or you can call me at 347-694-5615. We're located at 4515 Avenue D in Brooklyn, New York. Just give me a drop-off time and we can make it happen.

Brian Lehrer: That's Brooklyn-based community organizer, Nikkole Decaul. Also with us has been Robin George Andrews, volcanologist turned science journalist who has written about volcanoes for National Geographic, The New York Times, and other places. Thank you both so much for joining us today.

Nikkole Decaul: Thank you.

Robin George Andrews: Thanks for having me.

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