Strengthening the Caribbean Tsunami Early Warning System
(English * Español)
January 2008
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Australian geophysicist Gerard Fryer shows Lorna Inniss of Barbados' Coastal Zone Management Unit (center), and USAID/OFDA Regional Advisor Julie Leonard (right), how seismic activity is monitored at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii. |
Tsunamis rank as the fourth most lethal
natural phenomena to have affected the islands
of the Caribbean during the past 500
years, according to the Caribbean Disaster
Emergency Response Agency (CDERA).
The region is a seismically active one traversed
by deep ocean trenches, underwater
volcanoes, plate boundaries, and fault lines,
which all have the potential to spawn catastrophic
coastal hazards in a region where a
high percentage of its 40.5 million inhabitants
live near the sea.
Efforts to establish an early warning system
for tsunamis and other coastal hazards in
the Caribbean got under way with renewed
intensity following the Indian Ocean tsunami,
which caused widespread death and
destruction that made headlines around the
world in December 2004.
The event served as a worldwide call to action
to establish or improve regional early
warning systems to help save lives and reduce
human suffering in the face of such
devastating occurrences.
The Caribbean region was no exception. Before
the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami,
efforts to develop a coastal hazards warning
system in the Caribbean had been developing
piecemeal, according Julie Leonard, a disaster
expert from the Latin America and Caribbean
office of the U.S. Agency for International
Development’s Office of U.S. Foreign
Disaster Assistance (USAID/OFDA).
The Caribbean charter of the Intergovernmental
Oceanic Commission (IOC), part of
the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO), first proposed a
tsunami warning system for the Caribbean in
1993, but failed to obtain sufficient regional
support to secure funding until after the Indian
Ocean catastrophe occurred. The Caribbean
and adjacent regions are now coordinating
with the IOC and other partners to
implement the system, including long-term
mitigation measures and a program to educate
and prepare the region’s inhabitants for
future tsunamis and coastal hazards.
The system covers the region from the United
States to the north, Mexico and Central
America to the west, the northern part of
South America to the south, and the arc of
Caribbean islands to the east, and everything
in between.
The U.S. Government has joined these efforts
on various fronts, providing funding and
technical expertise to advance the project.
USAID/OFDA disaster experts, including
Leonard, are part of the group that represents
the U.S. Government on the UNESCO/
IOC’s Intergovernmental Coordination Group
for the Tsunami and other Coastal Hazards
Warning System for the Caribbean and Adjacent
Regions (ICG/CARIBE), which first met
in early 2006 in Barbados. The group met
twice in 2007, early in the year in Venezuela
and in December in Colombia.
In September 2007, USAID/OFDA awarded a
$300,000 grant to the regional disaster management
organization CDERA to support its
work to create awareness of tsunamis and
other coastal hazards at the community level.
At the September 26, 2007, signing ceremony
for the grant in Barbados, U.S. Ambassador
Mary M. Ourisman stressed that the success
of the system depends on “the ability to
get the warnings that have been generated
through a variety of technological applications
down to people who need to evacuate
vulnerable areas before tsunami waves or
storm surges can reach them.”
USAID/OFDA also has funded efforts to improve
the seismic monitoring and reporting
capabilities of the Seismic Research Unit
(SRU) of the University of the West Indies
(UWI).
The SRU, located in UWI’s St. Augustine
campus in Trinidad & Tobago, is the agency
responsible for monitoring earthquakes and
volcanic activity for the English-speaking
eastern Caribbean countries as well as the
Dutch islands of Saba, St. Eustatius and St.
Maarten.
A tsunami warning system depends on five
components, explained Leonard: one, seismic
monitoring; two, sea-level gauges to detect
whether there is any sea displacement that
might mean a tsunami has been produced;
three, the ability to collate information
quickly; four, to feed the information to national
focal points (meteorological services or
other government-designated organizations);
and five, to issue a warning to first responders
and humanitarian organizations and
evacuate the population at risk.
Together, these components are considered
an end-to-end system – on one end is the
science and technology and on the other end
is the vulnerable community. USAID/OFDA
has funded efforts on both ends.
In 2006, USAID/OFDA awarded a $249,680
grant to help fund the Seismic Research
Unit’s “Caribbean Tsunami Early Warning
System Communications and Protocols Project.”
The 18-month project strengthened the
capacity of the SRU to detect, monitor and
provide early warning of tsunamis and related
geological hazards.
The U.S. funding helped purchase equipment
and software to enable more rapid transmission
of information regarding seismic events
to vulnerable communities in the Eastern
Caribbean.
“Once you get a warning system in place, you
need to have protocols and procedures for
getting the warnings out,” Leonard said. “The
network was already in place for hurricanes,
but the issue with tsunamis is that it must
be lightning fast, unlike with hurricanes,
where you have days of advance warning. With tsunamis it can be a matter of minutes.”
To help ensure warnings from the newly revamped
Eastern Caribbean Seismic Network
are acted on in a timely and effective manner,
USAID/OFDA is partially funding
CDERA’s program “Empowering Coastal
Communities to Prepare for and Respond to
Tsunamis and Coastal Hazards.”
The goal of the two-year public awareness
and education program, which cost a total of
$828,500, is to provide the 2.5 million residents
living on or near coastal areas in the
Caribbean with the knowledge and skills to
respond effectively to the dangers of tsunamis
and coastal hazards.
“Often, we think of the Caribbean as a region
that is prone only to certain types of hazards
– hurricanes, tropical storms and floods,”
explained CDERA Council Chairman Dale
Marshall. “We tend to forget there are other
natural hazards such as earthquakes and
tsunamis, which though less frequent are
much greater in magnitude and higher in
potential loss of life.”
During the September 26, 2007, signing
ceremony for the USAID/OFDA funding,
CDERA Coordinator Jeremy Collymore said
the project “is an important bridge between
the science of monitoring and warning, and
the actions necessary to save lives.”
U.S. Ambassador Ourisman, who signed the
agreement on behalf of the American people,
said, “This assistance complements the multimillion-dollar U.S. Government support for
the creation of the Indian Ocean Tsunami
Warning System in the wake of the Indian
Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004. As
part of that effort, the U.S. Government provided
$37.5 million in related support to the
Caribbean and Atlantic regions, including the
installation of seismic monitoring stations in
islands throughout the region.”
Also as part of this support, USAID/OFDA
helped fund a Training Workshop in Seismology
and Tsunami Warnings at the Seismic
Research Unit June 25-30, 2007, with
44 participants from 21 countries and territories
in the Caribbean.
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