The UNISDR website reported that Dr. Wendy Watson-Wright, Assistant Director-General at the Intergovernmental Oceanic Commission (IOC), which is part of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), has joined the growing chorus of experts who are urging the Caribbean’s “40 million people and its 22 million annual tourists to take the threat of a tsunami seriously as it is a case of when and not if the region will be struck by the giant waves triggered by earthquakes and volcanic activity.”  Watson-Wright’s comments follow those of Dr. Joan Latchman of the Seismic Research Center located in Trinidad and Tobago who, following a 4.0 magnitude earthquake recorded off of the coast of Antigua on May 11 said, “Caribbean islands lay in an area of relatively high earthquake activity and an earthquake of 8.0 can hit any day based on patterns previously recorded.”

In an effort to both improve warnings and to prepare for the impact of a tsunami in the region, an early warning system is being put in place and one major regional full-scale tsunami warning exercise has already taken place with more planned. The early warning system will be located in Puerto Rico and is anticipated to be operational by 2014. The first full-scale exercise took place in March 2011 “to test the early warning systems that the IOC began to put in place in 2005 to strengthen regional defenses against disasters. The test – CARIBE WAVE 11/LANTEX – was based on a fictional earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale and located off the coast of the US Virgin Islands.”

Experts at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) were quoted in the UNISDR story as saying that, “An earthquake in the northern part of the Caribbean could generate waves up to 40 feet (12.2 meters) and threaten the lives of up to 35 million people living in coastal areas. Smaller waves could reach Florida, the Gulf of Mexico and as far north as New Jersey.”