Residents in the island’s North-Western community are reporting patches of fire on the edge of La Soufriere’s crater.
One resident Lennox Lampkin said the southwestern crater edge has a black lining as the grass is going up in smoke.
At a press conference, today geologist Richard Robertson said signals show La Soufriere could erupt in a matter of hours or days.
In a UWI Seismic youtube update earlier this week, Robertson said that La Soufriere has been displaying signs of “unhappiness”, and all indications were pointing to possible eruption.
At today’s press conference, Robertson also indicated that at 3 am Thursday, monitoring stations reported low-level seismic activity, with four different ones at varying times, with the latest at 10 am.
Long-period earthquakes were also reported; all these mean that fresh magma is trying to reach the surface.
The earliest period that shows an explosive eruption is in the next few hours or days, Robertson says.
Persons in the north, the Windward side of the island, could be seen buying petrol at the Mt Young gas station, while supermarkets saw a significant increase in shoppers.
