Caribbean Tsunami Workshop

University Of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, Mayaguez PR

Investigators

Abstract

This action is to support a workshop, to be held in San Juan, Puerto Rico in July/August 2003, to focus on the tsunami threat in the Caribbean region. The coastal population in the Caribbean is growing rapidly, and while everyone is fully aware of the hurricane threat and is, to a great extent, prepared to deal with the hurricane hazard, most people living in the region are not aware of the tsunami hazard. Since 1498, there have been twenty-seven verified tsunamis and an additional nine as "very likely". In the past 136 years there have been three destructive tsunamis in the northeastern Caribbean, the last one occurring in 1946. In the Caribbean Sea region the potential sources for tsunami generation include earthquakes, sub-aerial and submarine landslides, and underwater volcanic explosions. An extra-terrestrial impact is now accepted as having formed the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan Peninsula, and presumably generated an enormous tsunami. One potential threat for generating tsunamis comes from the most active volcano in the Caribbean, the Kick'em Jenny submarine volcano at the southeastern Caribbean. The University of the West Indies Seismic Research Unit (UWI/SRU), funded by the Caribbean Development Bank, is monitoring its activities. Also, the potential of a catastrophic collapse of the Souffriere volcano in Montserrat could generate a huge tsunami threatening the local area. The main objective of this workshop is to inform the international tsunami community of the tsunami hazard in the Caribbean Sea region and the diversity of tsunami generating sources. At the same time, this workshop will provide a motivation for the tsunami modeling community to address this multiple regional tsunami threat. It is also hoped that the workshop will inform and motivate local governments in the region to become more aware of the tsunami hazard, and involved in planning to mitigate this threat.