Montserrat Volcanic Eruption. - Built emergency cellular repeater on north side of the island to provide mobile phone service to the disaster relief operations covering Rendezvous Bay, Little Bay, Gerald's and surrounding areas.
The equipment was flown over via charter aircraft, the airport was still open to emergency traffic only. All the technical equipment required to build out a repeater site including the tower, batteries, and solar panels. I positioned the upper yagi antenna to point directly to the Boggy Peak Cell tower on Antigua. The lower panel antenna was aimed down toward the service area to best cover the disaster operations. Water, concrete. block and labor was locally supplied.
Had to stay in a hotel in the exclusion zone with rocks raining down on us with the eruptions. In the morning we would wait to leave our rooms to run to breakfast until the rocks stopped landing on the roof. Then, we would look out the door at the pool to see how big the rocks were that were still falling - then run like hell to the dinning room. My rental jeep was trashed from the rocks hitting it every night. Convertible roof torn to hell, windshield bashed out, and dints all over, but it ran; and we would jump in and drive at high speed until we were north enough and in safety.
Dangerous as hell, but a real blast - I loved it. Plymouth and the famous Emerald Cafe (Over the Gut and great Mountain Chicken) were now under 12 feet of volcanic ash. British Naval Ships were off the north end of the island evacuating people to Antigua.
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