Largest earthquake recorded at La Soufrière, magnitude of 3.9

St Vincent and the Grenadines: The new swarm of Volcano-Tectonic (VT) earthquakes, which began at the La Soufrière Volcano at 6:38 am yesterday, continued at a reasonably constant-rate before starting to declined at about 2:00 p.m. Activities decreased significantly at 4:00 p.m. However, small Volcano-Tectonic earthquakes were still being recorded.

National Emergency Management Organisation gave the above information.

The current swarm of Volcano-Tectonic earthquakes has been located at a depth about 6 km below the La Soufrière Volcano summit. This is slightly deeper than those reported between March 23 and 25, 2021, which were located at depths from 3 to 5 km below the summit. (Earlier estimates of these swarms were revised from 10 km to 3 to 5 km).

The largest Volcano-Tectonic earthquake was reported at 2:16 pm yesterday, with a magnitude of 3.9. There were nine more Volcano-Tectonic earthquakes in the swarm with magnitudes of 3.0 or more.

Today’s swarm of Volcano-Tectonic earthquakes was also much more intense than those that occurred during the period of March 23-25. They contained many more small earthquakes, with an average rate of about 50 earthquakes per hour compared with 1.5 per hour in March.

There were several reports of earthquakes being felt yesterday in communities close to the La Soufrière Volcano, such as Fancy and Chateaubelair.

The alert level remains at the Orange phase. The National Emergency Management Organisation is reminding the people that no evacuation order or notice has been declared.

The National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO) is also encouraging citizens, particularly persons living in communities very close to the volcano shores, to be prepared in the sudden incidents that it becomes necessary to evacuate at short notice.

A resident Michael Gopaul commented, “Let’s pray and hope that the La Soufriere volcano doesn’t move from an effusive state to an explosive state at anytime soon. God knows we DON’T want another 1979 experience at all. There were too many disruptions in people’s lives for those of you who were not around that time. Trust me PPL, and you don’t want to experience that.”

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