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Eruptions, unrest and disaster: a historical approach to eruptive histories in the Eastern Caribbean

Jenni Barclay1 , David Pyle2, Martin Mahony3, Richie Robertson4 and Karen Pascal4,5

  • Affiliations: (1) School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, England, UK (2) Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, England, UK (3) School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, England, UK (4) Seismic Research Centre, University of the West Indies, Trinidad (5) Montserrat Volcano Observatory, Montserrat

  • Presentation type: Talk

  • Presentation time: Friday 10:45 - 11:00, Room R280

  • Programme No: 3.4.8

  • Theme 3 > Session 4

Abstract

While eruptive histories are preserved in deposits the impacts of eruptions on communities at risk is more often preserved in written or oral histories. These provide critical insights into the actual versus the assumed impact of eruptions, and help to understand 'absences' in the stratigraphic record, and the conditions where eruptive histories might lead to disaster. Disaster is hard to define. But, there is general consensus that for groups of people located in a similar geographic area disaster usually happens when multiple people experience significant disruption, loss or hardships as a direct or indirect result of a hazardous physical event.  Using this starting point, we examined both eruptions and non-eruptive events (unrest) and focussed on the responses to threats of disaster, as well as its aftermath. The historical approach affords us unusually frank contemporary insights into different views on the evolving situation through (field) notebooks, personal and official correspondence. This survey of written and oral histories in St. Vincent and Montserrat demonstrate the strong local and regional importance of  periods of magmatic unrest, and periods of relative inactivity that punctuate longer cycles of eruptive activity in creating conditions for disaster. In these times vulnerabilities are amplified or dissipated, often through a lack of effective decision-making. To improve future response we argue eruptive histories need to more clearly account for the unusual and challenging capacity that volcanoes have to 'threaten disaster' during eruptive cycles. This can be done by the integration of historical, oral and stratigraphic histories.