Caribbean Tsunami Threats

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Historical records document numerous significant tsunamis affecting Caribbean region and
the threat remains. The region is geologically active with numerous fault lines and volcanoes.
Learn about the earthquake sources, volcanoes, and landslides that are capable of launching a
tsunami toward populated Caribbean shores.

View the Multimedia Version or read the text version below.

Table of Contents

 "City that Sank"

 Caribbean Tsunami History
 Vulnerability
 Local Tsunami Sources
o Caribbean Tectonics
o Local Earthquakes
o Island Volcanoes
o Kick 'em Jenny
 o Submarine Landslides
 Distant Tsunami Sources
o Eastern Atlantic Earthquakes
o Cumbre Vieja
o Continental Slope Landslides
 Summary

"City that Sank"

In the late 1600s, Port Royal, Jamaica was a bustling town and the largest English settlement
in the new world. As its population approached 6500 people, land to build on became scarce.
The town's citizens solved this problem by filling in shoreline areas with sand and
constructing ever-taller buildings. The city was a haven for pirates and has been referred to as
"the richest and wickedest city in the world."
On June 7, 1692, all that changed. An earthquake and resulting tsunami put over 130,000
square meters of the city under water. The sand on which the city had been built liquefied and
flowed out into Kingston Harbor, taking with it most of the city's northern section.
About half the population, or 3000 people, were killed. Another 2000 would be homeless and
die from disease in the months following.

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Caribbean Tsunami History

Curaçao harbor, with cruise ship in the background.

As the Port Royal example illustrates, the typically tranquil Caribbean and Atlantic waters can
quickly become deadly.
Tsunamis in the Caribbean are referred to as "El Peligro Olvidado" (The Forgotten Danger).
Because they occur much less frequently than hurricanes, many people are complacent about
the threat they pose. However, tsunamis are not uncommon in the Caribbean and adjacent
regions, with 47 significant verifiable events documented since the early 1500s. Overall, the
evidence suggests that the Caribbean and adjacent regions experience dangerous tsunamis
about twice per century.
Between 1842 and 2010, tsunamis caused 3510 fatalities in the Caribbean, compared to only
579 along the U.S. West Coast, Alaska, and Hawaii combined. That's six times as many
fatalities, even though the Caribbean area is only 1/5 the size of the northeastern Pacific. The
death toll includes more than 1,800 who perished in 1946 in the Dominican Republic during
tsunamis generated by an earthquake and aftershock.
Historical tsunami events and runups by location.

Tsunamis are associated most commonly with earthquakes, but they can also be generated by
volcanic eruptions or landslides generated along volcanic slopes or undersea. In the
Caribbean, the hazard is higher in the northern waters given the more numerous earthquakes
and steep submarine terrain.

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Vulnerability
Today, the large numbers of tourists along Caribbean coasts mean that every day up to 50,000
beach-goers are exposed to danger from a potential tsunami. Including the increased
population of residents and businesses along the coasts, the number of people at risk becomes
even higher. An event similar to the one that happened in the Dominican Republic in 1946
could therefore be even more disastrous today.
The Caribbean's many beaches attract about 40 million tourists per year. Many of these
tourists can be unfamiliar with the warning signs of a local-source tsunami as well as with
tsunami threats in the region.

This lesson examines sources of tsunamis that threaten the Caribbean and its many popular
beaches.

Which types of tsunamis do you think are likely to affect the region? (Choose all that apply.)

a) Local-source tsunami (one that is generated near an island or coastline and can arrive
within just 10 to 15 minutes)
b) Distant-source tsunami (one that can take hours to arrive)
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Local Tsunami Sources

Most of the tsunamis striking Caribbean coasts come from nearby sources. Local-source
tsunamis can strike quickly. Because there is usually very little warning, they pose particularly
dangerous threats to many parts of the Caribbean. Major fault lines in the Caribbean lie as
near as 20 kilometers to populated coasts.

On global maps, the region might not seem large, but the Caribbean Sea has an area greater
than 2.7 million square kilometers.
It is home to thousands of islands comprising over 20 countries and territories, including
Anguilla, Bahamas, Cuba, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, and many others. Additionally, several
central and South American countries including Belize, Panama, and Venezuela border the
west and south sides of the Caribbean Sea.

In the adjacent region, Bermuda, the U.S. Gulf and eastern U.S. are at risk from the same
tsunami sources affecting the Caribbean. Tsunami waves could also pose serious dangers for
Guyana and French Guiana on the northeast coast of South America.

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Caribbean Tectonics
The Caribbean plate is small but seismically very active; earthquakes occur on all sides, and
numerous volcanoes are present at the eastern and western ends. Just north of Puerto Rico, the
Caribbean plate meets the North American Plate along an active and complex plate boundary.
Stress at the boundary holds the North American Plate down to form the Puerto Rico Trench,
which is the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean.
The faults along this trench, along with the Hispaniola Trench north of the Dominican
Republic, significantly contribute to the region's earthquake and tsunami hazard. Other,
smaller fault lines are active along segments of the plate. A fault line in the Mona Canyon, just
northwest of Puerto Rico, has triggered past earthquakes resulting in destructive tsunamis.

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Local Earthquakes
In the Caribbean, scientists estimate that dangerous tsunamis from local earthquakes have
happened about twice a century. In 1918, a tsunami set in motion by a magnitude 7.3
earthquake in the Mona Canyon, between Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, produced waves up to
6 meters high in northwestern Puerto Rico. More than 140 people were reported killed, and
numerous brick buildings throughout northwestern Puerto Rico were destroyed or
condemned.
As recently as 2010, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake near Port au Prince, Haiti devastated the
capital. Though large-scale waves weren't seen, evidence suggests the earthquake triggered an
underwater landslide causing a local tsunami. Runups were as high as 3 meters, and the waves
dragged several people to their deaths near a small fishing village named Petit Paradis.
While past local earthquakes have had magnitudes in the 7.0 to 7.5 range, the potential for a
9.0 earthquake can't be excluded. Subduction zones along the Lesser Antilles, Hispaniola, and
Puerto Rico trenches are not unlike the one responsible for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. A
large earthquake along any of these faults could launch an extremely dangerous, wide-spread
tsunami, and many locations would have little time before the waves arrived.

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Island Volcanoes
Volcanoes, such as those located along the islands of the Lesser Antilles, can trigger
landslides that fall into the sea to cause tsunamis. Past tsunamis have been associated with the
collapse of a lava dome on the Soufrière Hills volcano on Montserrat and a large volcanic
mudflow from Mt. Pelée on Martinique.
The island of Dominica has nine volcanic peaks with steep, fractured slopes that have
experienced earthquakes greater than magnitude 7.3. Flank collapses on these volcanoes have
happened about 15 times in the last 12,000 years, as evidenced by underwater landslide
deposits along several islands in the Lesser Antilles.
Some scientists are concerned that a flank collapse of Morne aux Diables (Mountain of the
Devils) on Dominica could cause massive amounts of rock and debris to fall into the sea. If
that happened, waves up to 3 meters high could hit both Dominica and the popular low-lying
beaches of Guadeloupe, less than 50 kilometers north, with little or no warning.

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Kick 'em Jenny

Volcanoes below the ocean's surface pose an additional tsunami threat. A submarine volcano
called Kick 'em Jenny lies beneath the waters north of Grenada in the eastern Caribbean. Two
of its eruptions, in 1939 and 1965, resulted in flank collapses that generated measurable
tsunamis on the north coast of Grenada, just 8 kilometers away.

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Submarine Landslides

Stress at the plate boundary has tilted the limestone along the north edge of the Caribbean
plate. This instability means that from time to time, giant slabs have broken off and slid into
the Puerto Rico Trench.
One of these slabs was 70 km wide. These underwater landslides could launch extremely
large tsunamis, and coastal residents might have little warning of the incoming waves.

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Distant Tsunami Sources

In addition to its many local tsunami threats, the Caribbean's proximity to the larger Atlantic
basin puts it at risk of distant-source tsunamis.

The time to respond to distant-source threats can be much longer than for a local-source
tsunami, but the danger posed by these waves should not be minimized. Past distant-source
tsunamis have resulted in runups of several meters in parts of the Caribbean.

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Eastern Atlantic Earthquakes

Earthquakes off the coasts of Europe and Africa have generated tsunamis that have crossed
the Atlantic. Sources for these earthquakes include the Azores-Gibraltar fracture zone and
related fault areas.
Historically, these distant-source tsunamis have happened about once every 200 years. In
1755, a magnitude 9+ earthquake struck Lisbon, Portugal and sent waves more than a meter
high washing ashore in Saba, St. Martin, Antigua, and other Caribbean islands. Runups were
as high as 7 meters up the slopes along some coastal areas. These waves also struck the U.S.
Atlantic coast.

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Cumbre Vieja
The Cumbre Vieja volcano is located in the Canary Islands, off the coast of Morocco. Some
scientists are concerned that if the volcano erupts, a giant section of its flank could collapse
and generate a tsunami that could reach Caribbean and Western Atlantic shores.

However, not all scientists agree about whether a catastrophic landslide is possible. The flank
collapse could instead occur in several small slides. Also, many scientists suspect that if
indeed a large local tsunami were to be generated, the waves would not be able to maintain
their energy all the way across the Atlantic.

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Continental Slope Landslides

Another tsunami threat to the Caribbean involves landslides along the continental shelf of the
eastern U.S. Waves would likely result from sudden slope failures before or after an
earthquake. These slope failures might not generate enough of a seismic signal to trigger
alerts, so the waves might arrive with little or no warning.

A NOAA ship surveying the sea floor from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina to Georges Bank
east of Massachusetts, recently found that large submarine landslides have happened off the
coast of New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Several researchers have
documented landslide scars and deposits at numerous other places along the U.S. Atlantic
continental shelf.
The earthquake does not have to be major to trigger a submarine landslide. Even the 5.8
quake felt along the U.S. east coast in August 2011 could have been large enough to cause an
undersea landslide. If a similar magnitude quake occurred in the right location, it could
generate an underwater landslide capable of launching waves toward both the U.S. Atlantic
Coast and the Caribbean.

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Summary

The Caribbean and adjacent region includes Bermuda, countries in Central America and
northern South America, and over 20 island nations and territories. The area is at risk from
both local-source and distance-source tsunamis.

Local-source tsunamis can be generated by earthquakes, volcanoes, or landslides within

the Caribbean region. These tsunami-generating events can occur on land or undersea.

The northern Caribbean has a particularly high risk of earthquakes, while the Antilles Arc
contains several volcanoes, particularly on the island of Dominica.

Local-source tsunamis can reach shores within just minutes, so people must be prepared to
get themselves to safety very quickly.
Distant-source tsunamis are generated by sources outside the region and can take hours to
reach Caribbean shores.

Distant-source threats include Eastern Atlantic earthquakes and volcanoes, as well as

continental shelf landslides along the U.S. east coast.

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