Life under the frightening silhouette of a volcano isn’t easy for Montserrat inhabitants, but those that remain in the “Security Zone”, intent to go back to normality (map)

Mountain Man used to live in a beautiful stone house, that he built single handed, in the green hillsides of Soufriere, south of Montserrat, After many decades as construction worker in Britain, he returned to his home country: “the emerald island”. Life was great; at his house he had a bar and a restaurant, where inhabitants and tourists went to relax. But on July 18th, 1995, the mountain over Long Ground suddenly started to expel a thick smoke cloud, ash and gas. The “crisis” began, and two years later, the “exclusion zone” included two thirds of the island. Not even scientist can predict the end of this volcanic activity.

For Mountain Man and the rest of the inhabitants in Montserrat, nothing will be as before. In fact, when the first pyroplastic explosion occurred, and rocks, gasses, and ash came out of the crater at a speed of 130 km/h., Mountain Man’s house was the first to be destroyed. On June 19th 1997, a new explosion caused the death of 19 people, and grazed towns and cities, including Plymouth, the capital. Now, Mountain Man lives in what he calls a “shed”, in the “security zone”, north of the island, one of the places that survived the eruption. But he doesn’t gives up, and is planning to build a new house, and go back to some of the lost normality.

The Former Montserrat
Life in Montserrat, “before the volcano”, was completely normal. In this little island of 18 x 11 km., lived kind and working people. Most of the 11,000 inhabitants, where small farmers working on the volcanic fertile land, public officials, building and tourism workers. Among the visitors were retired Americans, who use to buy or rent country houses, to live in during the winter months; tourists passing through seduced by the island; and some rock stars, like Paul McCartney and David Bowie, who went to record at the famous Air Studios, created by George Martin, the former Beatles producer, and that were closed due to the Hugo hurricane in 1989.

Plymouth was a city full of beautiful colonial buildings. Green was ever present, except at the volcanic black beaches. As so many other Caribbean islands, Montserrat suffered the problem of migration, but in 1995 (no matter the damage caused by Hugo), life was peaceful.

The islanders were used to the hurricane’s destruction. But the violent volcanic eruption, found them totally unaware. The smoke of melted sulfide, and the boiling spring waters were just an attraction for tourists climbing up to Chance’s Peak, the highest point on the island. Along history, there were some cases of seismic activity, but nothing more.

An Irish Catholic Sanctuary
On his trip in 1493, Columbus was the first European to see the coast of this island, giving it the name of Montserrat, because the peaks recalled him similar mountains at the Montserrat monastery, back in Barcelona. At that time, Amerindians were gone long before. After Columbus, a group of English and Irish Catholics, escaping from the Protestant persecution in St. Kitts, arrived, and found here a perfect refuge.

In the mid XVII century, the island was organized according to the typical Caribbean colonial structure; there were sugar plantations worked by African slaves, and the economic and politic power was in the hands of the English and Irish people. After abolition of slavery, the sugar industry declined, until it faded away, and cotton and lime replaced sugar as the main economic source.

Lately, Montserrat has being granted more autonomy from the British, to such an extent that, in the 1990’s, it can be said that all the political power concentrates in the hands of a local Government, elected by the inhabitants.