Plymouth It is a ghost city located on the island of Monserratone of the Overseas territories of the United Kingdom in the Caribbean Sea, part of the archipelago of Piccole Antilles. At the end of the 90s, a tragic event marked its destiny: one violent eruption volcano Soufrière Hills He devastated the city, forcing the inhabitants to abandon it. Since then, the capital of the island was completely uninhabited, submerged by volcanic ash and debris, a symbol of the destructive power of nature, remembering what happened in Pompeii in 79 DC Montserrat was one English colony Until 1967, the year in which he obtained a certain degree of autonomy while remaining a member of the British Commonwealth.
The island of Monserrat prhyme of the eruption
Discovered by Christopher Columbus during his second shipping And colonized by Europeans in the seventeenth century, Montserrat was at the long dispute between British and French due to its strategic position and extended monocultures of sugar And tobacco.
At the end of the eighteenth century, the island passed definitively under the jurisdiction of the Kingdom of Englandbeing recognized, in the second half of the 1900s, as part of the British overseas territorieswith Plymouth as capital, and thus obtaining a sort of independence. In fact, although the British overseas territories officially remain under the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom, they enjoy a certain degree of administrative and legislative autonomyeven coming to choose your own forms of government.
The eruption of the volcano and the destruction of Plymouth
Although not one of the nerve centers of international maritime trade, Plymouth has enjoyed a certain dynamism, characterizing himself as the main nucleus of Montserrat. With a population of about 4,000 people, the small inhabited center hosted government buildings and the main port, as well as schools, hospitals and a flourishing economic community based on tourism and the export of agricultural products. On July 18, 1995, the volcano Soufrière Hills, quiescent For centuries, he resumed his business giving life to a dramatic sequence of SISMI and others phenomena destructive. Pyroclastic flows, lava flows and rains of volcanic ash affected the southern part of Montserrat in which the city was located, covering it with debris and making it progressively uninhabitable. The inhabited center was evacuated several times until total abandonmentwhich took place in 1997 following a last strong eruption that led to death of 19 people. Since then, access to the southern region of the island has been forbidden.
Plymouth, the ghost city still the capital of the island
The city of Plymouthin fact, despite being completely destroyed and uninhabited The capital of the island continues to be officially. The case is certainly singular, unique in its kind, since there are no similar situations any other part of the planet. In any case, it is a purely formal question, as the main services and government buildings have been temporarily transferred to the city of Bradespending the redevelopment of Little Baya city that will be officially designated Montserrat capital as soon as possible.
