The Soufrière Hills eruption progressively impacted larger proportions of Montserrat. The eruption imposed severe hardships as more and more of the heavily populated southern half of the island became uninhabitable. Eventually more than half of the island's 11,000 residents left to other West Indies islands, or to England, but more than 4000 people elected to remain on Montserrat. These prefabricated houses were being constructed in September 1997 to house refugees at Davy Hill, on the northern side of the island.

Photo by Lydia Mihelic Pulsipher, 1997 (University of Tennessee).

This image is made available under the Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 license terms.

Soufrière Hills