St. Vincent and the Grenadines forest areas were impacted on varying levels during the explosive eruptions of La Soufriere volcano last year.
During a call to WEFM’s Activated Mornings Director of the Forestry Department within the Ministry of Agriculture Fitzgerald Providence, spoke about the lowest level impact such as ash on leaves that were washed off in days, to complete destruction of vegetation by pyrcoclastic flows.
“Because the damage varied from defoliation of the trees to breaking of branches and so on as the ash got heavy and as rain the rain got on it, it got heavy to the covering of the forest floor, which would have smothered some of the vegetation there but under the volcano itself, because of the heat from the pyrcoclastic flows and the heavy ash you had total destruction of the top third of the volcano. That area between between the wallibou river and the laraki area, you had a lot of pyroclastic flows, a lot of pyroclastic flows would have come down there and would have had major destruction of the vegetation in that area” Providence said.
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, on April 9th 2021 the La Soufrière volcano started erupting, causing the displacement of about 20,000 people, devastating the livelihoods of Vincentians and significantly impacting the environment in the Eastern Caribbean.
