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20 August 2007

Tsunami Early Warning System Takes Shape in the Caribbean

U.S. experts and 40 years of experience in Pacific contribute
to effort

By Cheryl Pellerin
USINFO Staff Writer

This NOAA satellite image shows Hurricane Dean as it makes
its way through the Carribean islands on August 20. Various agencies are coming
together to develop regional tsunami early warning systems in the Indian Ocean,
the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. (© AP Images)

its way through the Carribean islands on August 20. (© AP
Images)

This is the second in a series of articles about U.S. contributions to a
global early warning system for tsunamis and other hazards.

Washington -- An early warning system for tsunamis is taking shape in the
Caribbean region, building on the island nations’ long experience in dealing
with hurricanes, storm surge, volcanic eruptions and mudslides.

As Hurricane Dean, the first of the Atlantic season, raged through the
Caribbean August 20, leaving nine people dead in its wake among the region's
7,000 islands, islets, reefs and cays, experts from a handful of countries are
putting their own experience and technology to work to strengthen the region
against a future tsunami.

The collaboration began in 2005, after the UNESCO Intergovernmental
Oceanographic Commission (IOC) created a framework for developing regional
tsunami early warning systems in the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean and the
Mediterranean.

A month later, the U.S. Agency for International Development Office of
Foreign Development Assistance (OFDA) and its Caribbean intergovernmental
counterpart, the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency (CDERA), brought
key parties together in Barbados to discuss building a tsunami warning
system.

At the meeting were experts from the Seismic Research Unit at the University
of the West Indies-St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago; the University of Puerto
Rico-Mayaguez; the Montserrat (a British territory) Volcano Observatory,
Meteo-France at Guadeloupe and Martinique; and others.

The group concluded, said OFDA Regional Adviser Julie Leonard during an
August 14 USINFO interview, "that whatever is created in the Caribbean
should not be a stand-alone [system] but should be able to incorporate other
coastal hazards."

STRENGTHENING A SYSTEM

Because the Caribbean and the United States are close neighbors that share
residents, tourists and interests in shipping, trade, oil and gas, insurance and
land investment, one of the best things the United States can do to help the
Caribbean monitor tsunamis is bolster its own early warning system. (See related
article.)

In 2006, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
installed five new deep-ocean assessment and reporting of tsunami (DART) buoy
stations, called tsunameters, off the U.S. East and Gulf coasts and the
Caribbean.

"These buoys are a first line of defense in providing citizens of the
Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf regions with a comprehensive tsunami warning
system," NOAA Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher said at the time.

Until the Caribbean has a working system, NOAA, along with the Japan
Meteorological Agency, is providing 24-hour interim watch services from its
Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) in Hawaii. (See related
article.)

Today, the NOAA network includes 28 DART stations and will grow to 39 by
spring 2008 -- 32 in the Pacific, seven in the Atlantic Basin.

NOAA also has increased the number of real-time sea-level stations in Puerto
Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, developed inundation (flooding) models for two
at-risk communities in Puerto Rico, expanded coastal bathymetric (the study of
underwater depth) mapping and modeling, provided decision and analysis tools to
regional institutions and, with USGS, is installing seismic stations in
neighboring countries.

NOAA installed five DART buoy stations off the U.S. East and
Gulf coasts and the Carribean in 2006.

U.S. CONTRIBUTION

In the Caribbean, with local and international partners and funding approved
by Congress in 2005, OFDA, NOAA, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and other
agencies have been lending expertise and technology to the Caribbean effort.

According to NOAA Tsunami Program Manager David Green, five seismic stations
-- in Grenada, Panama, Honduras, Barbados and the Dominican Republic -- are
installed and streaming data to the USGS National Earthquake Information Center
in Colorado and NOAA's tsunami warning centers in Hawaii and Alaska.

Stations will be installed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Barbuda, part of the
nation of Antigua and Barbuda, in September, and in Jamaica and Grand Turk,
legislative seat of Turks and Caicos Islands, in November.

Before 2005, Green said, "we had some seismic information but it was too
sparse. The best we could do until recently was maybe to give people a heads up
if there was an earthquake. We didn't know enough to give a [tsunami]
warning."

The USGS also "trained two people in each country on the maintenance and
operation of our stations," said Jean Weaver, USGS regional specialist for the
Americas, "and in conjunction with UNESCO/IOC, OFDA and the University of the
West Indies Seismic Research Unit, held a regional workshop on tsunamis at the
end of June."

Seismologist Walter Mooney, lead coordinator for the USGS Indian Ocean
tsunami warning system program, organized the training course.

"We had 43 participants from 20 countries," he said during an August 16
USINFO interview, "and gave six days of training in how the Pacific Tsunami
Warning Center and the Japanese Meteorological Agency disseminate warnings."

NEXT STEPS

NOAA also is working with international partners and organizations to help
update and strengthen Caribbean ocean observations, data and information
delivery, dissemination and notification systems and the region's communications
and information technology infrastructure.

Other countries involved in the region's tsunami and coastal hazards
mitigation effort include Spain, Norway, Venezuela, France, Russia and the
United Kingdom.

In one of the next steps, Leonard said, OFDA and CDERA will begin to develop
protocols to disseminate tsunami warnings at the national level.

"At this point,” she said, “the work that remains to be done is getting the
warning from the [national warning center] out to the community. We have to look
at the flow of information, establish the protocols and procedures," and
determine the best way to alert the population.

More
information about the tsunami warning system for the Caribbean and adjacent
regions is available on the IOC Web site.

Additional information about the
Pacific Tsunami Warning Center is available on the NOAA Web site.

See also “Tsunami,
Earthquake Detection Improved Since 2004 Disaster.”

(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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More Coverage

Part
I: Tsunami, Earthquake Detection Improved Since 2004 Disaster

Part
III: Tsunami Early Warning System Takes Shape in the Caribbean

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