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Volcanic ash delays trip home
By BRIDGET HALL GRUMET
© St. Petersburg Times, CRYSTAL RIVER -- The eruption of a highly active Caribbean volcano has grounded a group of students who planned to return Monday from the British Virgin Islands, leaving a Crystal River-based travel company scrambling to get the students on the next flight home. The group of 22 college and 33 high school students from around the world, along with 15 instructors, have finished their three-week "voyage" with Odyssey Expeditions Corp. of Crystal River, a travel company that takes the students sailing, diving and hiking throughout the British Virgin Islands. But their return flight out of Tortola, one of the British Virgin Islands, was canceled Monday as the thick haze of volcanic ash from an eruption some 200 miles away on the island of Montserrat forced the airport to close, Odyssey Expeditions staffer Sara Buchheim said. Mrs. Buchheim heard the news from her sons, Lecanto residents Jason and Jon Buchheim, who own the company and are leading this expedition. "They called me and said, "This is a disaster. The boats are covered with ash and the airport is closed and we have 55 kids that want to go home,' " Mrs. Buchheim said. None of the students are from Citrus County. A Tampa high school student, the only Florida teen on the trip, left Monday with his mother, who was vacationing on a nearby island, Mrs. Buchheim said. The rest of the group remains at Tortola, ready to leave as soon as the airport reopens, she said. Although most of the students called their parents about the delay, Mrs. Buchheim spent Monday fielding phone calls from parents, assuring them that the kids are fine and will be flying home as soon as possible. "I have not had my ear off this phone all day," Mrs. Buchheim said with a weary chuckle. A volcano on the West Indies island of Montserrat, about 200 miles southeast of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, erupted about 8 p.m. local time Sunday, said Francisco Balleste, data acquisition program manager for the U.S. National Weather Service station in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The blast from the Soufriere Hills Volcano sent a thick plume of volcanic ash into the sky, blanketing areas as far as San Juan, he said. "Our parking lot was just resurfaced," Balleste said in a telephone interview. "It was completely white. If it was winter, I'd think it was snow." Since its first recorded eruption on July 18, 1995, the Soufriere Hills Volcano has been a hotbed of seismic activity, periodically venting steam and ash. The eruption Sunday was the volcano's largest since March 2000, said Peter Dunkley, director of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory. Odyssey Expeditions has led about 50 trips to the area over the past six years, and Mrs. Buchheim said previous groups have not had problems from volcanic activity in the region. The program is advertised in national publications and on its Web site as a chance for students to learn seafaring skills while swimming along coral reefs, hiking through tropical forests and visiting the "open-air markets" of the British Virgin Islands. Students pay $3,875 for the voyage, plus their own air fare. Mrs. Buchheim said her sons and the rest of the group "are holding up fine," although they are eager to leave the airport and return home. "They're not abandoned," Mrs. Buchheim said. "They'll just get a longer vacation." -- Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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