A two-hour-long earthquake Monday caused the Soufriere Hills volcano to erupt and spray pebble-sized debris on Salem, one of the British colony's most heavily populated towns in the west-central portion of the island.
But most residents stayed put until a later eruption sprayed rooftops with a dense hail of debris and blacked out the sun with dark clouds of searing rock, ash and gas -- called pyroclastic flows -- that people feared would reach a designated safe zone.
Residents ran for their cars and jammed the sole road to the north of this 20-kilometer-wide island.
The debris reached as far north as Cudjoehead, a town 8 kilometers from the mouth of the volcano and about 3 kilometers inside the safe zone.
Nearly a year ago, in September, a similar eruption forced Salem residents to flee their homes in the middle of the night.
An eruption late Sunday had set ablaze wooden row houses in Plymouth, the capital abandoned two years ago when the Soufriere Hills volcano first sprang to life.
In the past two years, eruptions have prompted nearly half of Montserrat's 11,000 residents to abandon the island. The most recent exodus followed a June 25 eruption that killed 10 people and left nine missing and believed dead.
That eruption has caused the British government to reconsider the viability of the island, where 1,200 displaced residents live in barracks-like shelters with poor sanitation.
Britain is considering polling residents about whether they want to leave the unstable island if they're given help to relocate in Britain or its other Caribbean territories.
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