In a few minutes, the once beautiful city became a ghost town. Now it's a dark tourist heaven. Montserrat is a mountainous island in the Caribbean and is an overseas territory of the UK.
Plymouth was the capital until 1995, and devastating volcanic eruptions tore the island apart, causing mass evacuation. The residents were initially returning to town, but two years later the second eruption destroyed most of the city, and was the last nail in its future ffin. The Soufrière Hills volcano erupted in July 1995, dropping thermal currents and ash over most of the island.
Volcanologists have long warned of the devastation caused by such an eruption, especially for the capital, which sat just under four miles away.
The Hills of Soufrière continued to erupt for weeks, and in late August, an explosion covered Plymouth with a thick layer of ash, making the sky almost completely black. By December, 4,000 people – the entire population of Plymouth – had been evacuated.
Some returned several months later by June 1997, but another massive eruption killed 19 people and saw a fever stream destroying the buildings and the island's airport.
The event is the ultimate deciding factor in Plymouth's fate, buried under 1.4 meters (4.6 feet) of ashes, and the city that leads to the fame of “Pompeii of the Caribbean” has not recovered.
Plymouth is currently located beneath a mountain of dust and ashes. Once a magical place was completely abandoned, it was devastated after extensive evacuation.
Christopher Columbus first discovered Montserrat in 1493 on his second trip to American descent, but he did not dock the ship. It was not until 1632 that Irish exiles encountered the island, and Europeans began to calm it down.
Many Irish people moved to the Caribbean during this period. This is conditioned on the brutal oppression of Oliver Cromwell, widely described as the first British dictator.
Montserrat is often referred to as the Caribbean Emerald Island, given the many Irish settlers, and along with Labrador and Newfoundland in Canada, is the only place outside Ireland where St. Patrick's Day is a public holiday.
Brave travelers have once been allowed to experience the Caribbean islands, but of course they need to be careful.
