(BBC) The calls for a tsunami early warning centre in the Caribbean are getting louder.
The latest shout has come from Puerto Rico’s representative to the US Congress who called on the Obama administration to establish a warning system for the US territory and the Caribbean.
“This centre will result in improved tsunami detection, warning and education activities in the Caribbean,” Pedro Pierluisi said.
The devastating tsunami that hit Japan and left thousands dead has made many in the region nervous.
Mr Pierluisi, a non-voting resident commissioner in the House of Representatives, introduced a bill asking the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to establish such a facility at the University of Puerto Rico.
He added that despite the tsunami threat facing the US Caribbean territories of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, the only two warning centres in America are located in the Pacific region.
Hazard awareness
Puerto Rico has been earmarked as a Caribbean centre by United Nations agencies and countries within the region since the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004.
But progress has been slow and the earliest implementation date is now expected to be 2014.
Dr Joan Latchman of the Seismic Research Centre of the University of the West Indies says the delays could prove catastrophic for the region.
“We have so many countries, so you have different contributors, different ideas,” she told BBC Caribbean.
“Nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of getting the hazard awareness, the legislation for the building codes, warning centre, everything, it needs to be done now.”
Officials in Washington said the NOAA was considering a centre for Puerto Rico where Governor Luis Fortuño has offered to contribute US$6 million for the construction of a facility.
Fatalities
Congress would have to provide another US$6 million for construction, plus the funding for additional employees.
Tsunamis – extraordinarily large ocean waves, usually created by strong earthquakes – occur far more frequently in the Pacific, where there is a large amount of seismic activity, than in the Atlantic, scientists say.
According to the UWI, there have been ten confirmed earthquake-generated tsunamis in the Caribbean Basin in the past 500 years with four causing fatalities.
“(They) have inflicted a small amount of losses compared to other hazards such as windstorms, earthquakes and volcanic activity,” the UWI’s Seismic Research Centre said.
International media have however quoted researchers as saying that the last great Caribbean tsunami in 1946 killed about 1,600 people in the Dominican Republic.
Experts point out that was before large tourism and coastal developments and any future tsunamis in the Caribbean would be more costly.
More susceptible
“It’s going to happen, it’s just where and when,” Bill Proenza of the US Weather Service told the New York Times.
“Even though they may have more earthquakes in the Pacific Rim, when a tsunami occurs in the Caribbean, it yields more loss of life,” he said.
The UWI says the northern Caribbean region near Puerto Rico and Hispaniola is more susceptible to tsunamis.
It adds that since the islands in the Eastern Caribbean lie in an area of relatively high seismic activity, the most likely tsunamis to affect the the sub-region are those which can be triggered by shallow earthquakes, greater than magnitude 6.5.
In other sub-regions such as the southern Caribbean there are no historical records of destructive tsunami impacts, according to the UWI.
