In the wake of the erup­tion of the La Soufriere vol­cano which oc­curred yes­ter­day morn­ing in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines (SVG), one pas­tor is con­cerned the is­land might face a dou­ble cri­sis as it was still bat­tling the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

First re­sponse shel­ter co­or­di­na­tor and SVG Na­tion­al Di­rec­tor for Child Evan­ge­lism Fel­low­ship, Pas­tor Kel­ron Har­ry told Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view, should the 68 shel­ters reach ca­pac­i­ty; peo­ple’s homes may al­so have to be­come places of ac­com­mo­da­tion.

“We are talk­ing about 20,000 peo­ple that will be af­fect­ed from that red zone. So it is not just shel­ters. I be­lieve we have to work hand in hand. Homes have been opened be­cause peo­ple would have to open their homes and so on al­so.”

But with the re­gion at the heights of the pan­dem­ic, he fears this can al­so cause a dou­ble cri­sis for the peo­ple of St Vin­cent.

“This of great con­cern to me be­cause how we man­age peo­ple in this time will be very crit­i­cal and will say a lot about us and the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has added to the stress be­cause now we will not on­ly have to be con­cerned about peo­ple safe from the vol­cano, but we have to keep them safe from in­fec­tion…from this trou­bling virus,” lament­ed Har­ry.

Re­gard­ing so­cial dis­tanc­ing at the shel­ters, he could not say how this could be ef­fec­tive­ly done but was hop­ing the vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve on­go­ing in SVG might help.

Har­ry who is al­so the Dis­trict Su­per­in­ten­dent at Church of the Nazarene in Arnos Vale, St Vin­cent said peo­ple man­ag­ing shel­ters would have to use com­pas­sion as a dri­ving force at this time.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tion on the men­tal and emo­tion­al state of Vin­cen­tians at this time, Har­ry said peo­ple were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing much anx­i­ety.

“Per­sons are anx­ious, be­cause of the un­known fac­tor. With this vol­cano, we don’t know how de­struc­tive it will be. We don’t know when it will be­come that de­struc­tive. Every­thing is just like sit and wait or do what you can do and wait and see. So it cre­ates a very high lev­el of anx­i­ety. So lead­er­ship is very im­por­tant at this time. And we trust that guide­lines, di­rec­tions, com­mu­ni­ca­tion will be con­stant so that peo­ple can know what is hap­pen­ing and know what they need to do.”

Har­ry who spoke with Guardian from the town of Cal­li­aqua in SVG where he was head­ing to the Cal­li­aqua An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School—a shel­ter—dis­closed the au­thor­i­ties an­nounced a cut of the wa­ter sup­ply just af­ter noon yes­ter­day to pre­vent wa­ter con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. He said every bit of help St Vin­cent was re­ceiv­ing from the NGO’s in T&T and oth­er parts of the re­gion was para­mount.