Barbados under ash: life through a volcanic eruption ash cloud

I'd planned to experience life in Barbados, spending a year on a paradise island.

If you've been seeing any of the news updates from the Caribbean recently, you'll know that my plans have hit something of a stumbling block this week.

I've been spending a lot of my time this week, glued to this page.

Over Easter, La Soufriere volcano on St Vincent erupted, sending ash thousands of feet into the sky, and literally carpeting Barbados in its wake.

As a result, the lifting of Covid restrictions has been made null and void. We still can't go out, for a new reason!

The whole point of this show is to give you an insight into life in Barbados, from the point of view of someone who's actually living here. I wouldn't really be serving you properly if I didn't give you an on-the-ground insight into what's going on here.

So this episode is a little different.

We're not tasting any delicious local treats.

We're not testing any Bajan beverages.

We're not enjoying any experiences or activities.

What we are going to do, is bring you a flavour of what it's like for someone who's relocated to this beautiful paradise island, on the Barbados Welcome Stamp, and finds themselves in the middle of a fluke natural incident.

I'll be doing this with the help of some of my friends who have kindly offered their thoughts, and footage.

During this episode, we cover:

The views of a couple of my new friends here who are also experiencing this alongside me.

My possible emergency escape contingency planning with my friend, Marie.

What the people of Barbados went through last time this happened (back in the 70s) with Vic Fernandez.

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**For the benefit of any news agencies or journalists who'd like to reach out for on the ground correspondence from the paradise island, I have limited availability for both live and recorded two ways. You can contact me via the email button (fourth button down) on my show page here! 

I've added a full transcript of my report from the episode in these show notes below for your reference.

Please do not use any section of the content without prior permission from me. I'm regularly checking my emails so will be able to get back to you within minutes not hours!**

 

Yvonne: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to this week's episode. Well, this was not the episode that I had planned to be sharing with you this week. I was meant to be out trying beach tennis at the weekend on Brian's beach, but that is going to have to wait another time because this week this happened, my thoughts are with those people in St.

[00:00:18] St Vincent, who are affected by this much more than us here in Barbados. There's a certain radius around the volcano that has been evacuated as according to the university of the West Indies, the volcano continues to erupt quite explosively and has now begun to generate what they call pyroclastic density currents.

[00:00:39] So these are really hot currents of between 200 and 700 degrees Celsius. The ground hugging flows of Ash and debris that are coming down from the volcano to the surrounding areas. So essentially impacting on everything in its path. The last eruption was in 1979 and the one before that was 1902 at this stage, it is far too soon to be telling how bad

[00:01:03] this one's going to be so, you know, we're dealing with unpredictable mother...