The La Soufriere eruption.
Jazmin is currently completing her PhD,
in which she has used La Soufriere volcano
and the Caribbean island of St Vincent to investigate how societies co-exist with active volcanoes.
After around 15 months of heightened seismic activity in the area,
the eruption of La Soufriere on the island of St Vincent began with phreatic(steam-generated)
activity on 6th May.
However, images taken by staff at Montserrat Volcano Observatory and
helicopter pilot Greg Scott during reconnaissance flights show that Soufriere Hills Volcano is still active
and likely to erupt again in the future.
The eruption of Mount Pelee on 8th May on the island of Martinique, which is within the same group of islands as St Vincent,
was even bigger than the eruption of La Soufriere.
Below are otherwise 4 videos in a series,
which document the events from an eruption of Soufriere Hills Volcano the previous year
so that you can better understand the events which then led to the June 1997 eruption.
When I was based at Montserrat Volcano Observatory in the Eastern Caribbean, we instead wore orange, flame retardant overalls for fieldwork, as this colour was
easier for our helicopter pilot to see against landscape of Soufriere Hills Volcano.