REALTIME TEST FOR TSUNAMI WARNING SYSTEM

By Staff Writer

Once again, having dodged a potentially catastrophic natural disaster, Cayman is reviewing aspects of its disaster preparedness and response capabilities.

Last week’s massive 7.6 undersea earthquake might not have been a full wake-up call as monitoring and alert systems are in place, but it did put their capabilities to the test.

Appearing on the Caymanian Times podcast, Cayman Conversations with Ralph Lewis, Dani Coleman, the Director of Hazard Management Cayman Islands (HMCI) and Acting Deputy Director Lennox Vernon reviewed the response to the alarm triggered by the February 8th quake.

Although measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale, the undersea earthquake located 126 miles southwest of Grand Cayman, was not felt in the islands and there have not been any reports of damage.

But while an alarm app provided to residents by HMCI did activate, there are still some technical issues to be addressed particularly with the tsunami alert.

“We have a couple technical issues with the app itself,” explained HMCI director Coleman. “We are doing a lot of troubleshooting now with the supplier to ensure regular testing of the system as opposed to letting the app go dormant or in sleep mode which is what seems to have happened.”

Several persons who have the app installed on their gadgets have shared their experiences that it either didn’t activate or that they’ve had problems installing it.

However, since the earthquake over 300 more people have installed the app bringing the total up to a few days to 9,652.

“Now that’s still under 10,000 if you think about the island that has potentially up to 82.000 to 85,000 people,” noted the HMCI director. “We still need to do more of that. So we need to make sure that we’re getting further reach. If you haven’t downloaded your app, please do so,” she appealed to the public..

Regarding raising the alarm, the HMCI director said: “We have tsunami sensors here in the Cayman, unfortunately, they’re off offline because they are responsible to the UK Hydrographic Office.” She said “there’s been a few issues with them, and I think they’re currently working with the Lands and Survey Department, who are the responsible government body for them…In a real event, those sensors wouldn’t be of any assistance to us because obviously at that point the waves would have already impacted the Cayman Islands.

Another issue highlighted coming out of the earthquake event, is the importance of the public relying only on official information from verifiable sources.

This was stressed by Acting HMCI Deputy Director, Lennox Vernon.

“Again, like we see during weather events, a lot of people become armchair meteorologists, and no different in a situation like this. We’re just urging the public that we have a strong team of communicators within the government that come together and take only verified validated information and share that. Stay tuned to official sources because we are only publishing verified information to members of the public.”

He cited one situation where someone had posted on social media that the all-clear had been given for Cayman when it was in fact for another country in the footprint of the earthquake.

“That creates a bit of confusion and makes our jobs that much more difficult because we’re trying to do damage control whether we’re responding or reacting to a really sensitive or very threatening situation,” Mr Vernon pointed out.