Gail Alexan­der

Mem­bers of T&T De­fence Force sail to St Vin­cent to­mor­row on the Galleons Pas­sage ves­sel to car­ry sup­plies and as­sist the erup­tion-rav­aged is­land– and the ves­sel will al­so bring home T&T na­tion­als who are in St Vin­cent.

This was con­firmed by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Amery Browne al­so re­ceived a let­ter yes­ter­day from Fi­nance Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Camil­lo Gon­salves giv­ing a sta­tus re­port of the sit­u­a­tion and what they need­ed fol­low­ing last Fri­day’s ex­plo­sive erup­tion of the Soufriere vol­cano.

Bil­low­ing plumes of ash cov­ered St Vin­cent– cur­rent­ly awash with it– al­so swamp­ing Bar­ba­dos, 118 miles east. The vol­cano has con­tin­ued puls­ing.

Young stat­ed, “We will be de­ploy­ing 50 of­fi­cers of the T&T De­fence Force to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines to­mor­row. This con­tin­gent com­pris­es of per­son­nel from En­gi­neers, In­fantry/Provost, Med­ical and Lo­gis­tics. They will be sta­tioned in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines for two weeks in the first in­stance.”

“The Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM), and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, has been co­or­di­nat­ing ef­forts to col­lect sup­plies. These will be sent to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines on Tues­day and Wednes­day. In the first in­stance, sup­plies com­prise of wa­ter, food es­sen­tials, toi­letries, hy­giene ma­te­ri­als, sim­ple med­ical sup­plies and oth­er items re­quest­ed, for ex­am­ple, wa­ter tanks and buck­ets.”

The Galleons Pas­sage will car­ry troops and sup­plies to SVG to­mor­row.

Young added: “We will seek to repa­tri­ate T&T na­tion­als from St Vin­cent and the Grenadines on Tues­day us­ing the ves­sel and are cur­rent­ly mak­ing such arrange­ments along with the For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­istry. All na­tion­als re­turn­ing will be quar­an­tined and treat­ed in ac­cor­dance with the Min­istry of Health’s COVID-19 pro­to­cols.”

Peo­ple wish­ing to do­nate items to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines should con­tact the ODPM or drop off items at the var­i­ous col­lec­tion points iden­ti­fied by ODPM.

“Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to pro­vide sup­port and as­sis­tance re­quest­ed and re­quired by St Vin­cent and the Grenadines. Our prayers and thoughts con­tin­ue to be with St Vin­cent and the Grenadines­—we as­sure our broth­ers and sis­ters there, we stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with them dur­ing their pe­ri­od of chal­lenge.”

Browne said St Vin­cent’s wa­ter catch­ment ar­eas are af­fect­ed by ash and dust and he re­ceived an ur­gent re­quest last Sat­ur­day for drink­ing wa­ter.

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon has been mo­bil­is­ing bot­tled wa­ter apart from what’s be­ing sent over.

Browne said he’s in con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Vin­cent­ian Min­is­ter of State re­spon­si­ble for For­eign Af­fairs who’s shar­ing re­al time in­for­ma­tion on the is­land’s needs.

Yes­ter­day, UNC deputy leader David Lee said, “We’ll do our part to send some re­lief to the peo­ple of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, our prayers go out to them.”

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Gon­salves: We’re cov­ered in ash

Browne said St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Fi­nance Min­is­ter Gon­salves (son of SVG Prime Min­is­ter Ralph Gon­salves) wrote him yes­ter­day stat­ing the “ex­plo­sive events are on­go­ing.”

Gon­salves said im­me­di­ate needs are wa­ter, bed­ding, res­pi­ra­to­ry equip­ment and sup­plies, and san­i­tary prod­ucts for ba­bies/el­der­ly/women.

Gon­salves added, “The is­land is cov­ered in ash, from a dust­ing/few inch­es in the south to many feet in the north. Sci­en­tists’ pre­dic­tions were very ac­cu­rate. We man­aged to get the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple out of the dan­ger zone be­fore the first ex­plo­sion... some chose to stay and on­ly de­cid­ed to leave once ex­plo­sions were un­der­way. Im­me­di­ate evac­u­a­tion was some­what chaot­ic, but large­ly suc­cess­ful.”

“Con­di­tions in the shel­ters are very un­even. Some are ad­e­quate, oth­ers less so. We were prob­a­bly two weeks too slow in ac­quir­ing ad­di­tion­al cots, so a few thou­sand cots are still in Mi­a­mi await­ing clear­ance to fly down (ash has closed air­space) as such, many peo­ple are sleep­ing on the floor. That is slow­ly be­ing re­solved with do­na­tions and makeshift so­lu­tions.”

Gon­salves stat­ed about 20,000 peo­ple will be in­ter­nal­ly dis­placed for up to three or four months.

He said, “His­tor­i­cal­ly, the vol­cano keeps go­ing in­ter­mit­tent­ly for a cou­ple months. So far, in­fra­struc­tur­al dam­age isn’t as bad as feared. Not a great deal of la­va flow in the di­rec­tion of vil­lages, just ash and rocks.”

He added: “A num­ber of homes have been de­stroyed, un­der the weight of ash or re­port­ed small fires ig­nit­ed by hot pro­jec­tiles. Mi­nor dam­age by rocks eject­ed from the vol­cano. Most crops on is­land will be lost, and un­told live­stock.

“The big im­me­di­ate chal­lenge is the com­fort, care and safe­ty of evac­uees. COVID is a huge un­der­ly­ing threat giv­en con­di­tions in which peo­ple are housed. Oth­er is­lands are of­fer­ing ac­com­mo­da­tions but re­quir­ing vac­ci­na­tion first. Most peo­ple in the rur­al north have been vac­cine-scep­ti­cal. This will com­pli­cate mat­ters tremen­dous­ly, and like­ly lead to big out­breaks.”

“Tremen­dous vol­un­teerism and sol­i­dar­i­ty across St Vin­cent and the Grenadines. Many are help­ing in myr­i­ad ways.

Thank you for your con­tin­ued con­cern and sol­i­dar­i­ty,” Gon­salves told Browne.

Bar­ba­dos, which was plunged in­to dark­ness from heavy ash cloud cov­er saw slight­ly cleared skies yes­ter­day, but still had much ash cloud­ing its at­mos­phere.

At 3.30 pm last Sat­ur­day res­i­dents in Bar­ba­dos’ North showed pic­tures of com­plete dark­ness.