Last Friday, March 24, one day after the National Emergency Management Organisation(NEMO) conducted a Tsunami Evacuation Exercise in Port Elizabeth, Bequia, some residents were startled by an earthquake.

According to a report from the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Unit (UWI-SRC), on March 24 at 9:42 p.m. (Local Time), a magnitude 3.6 quake, located at latitude: 13.02N and longitude: 61.14W occurred.

Facebook user, Calela Kydd, like several other people on the Grenadine isle was startled by the shaking.

She wrote on the social media site, “shook the house to the point I thought it was gonna cave in and heard a loud sound like an explosion but activity was short. One minute it was there and the next nothing.”

One person, through a WhatsApp message sent to a friend asked if the Tsunami Evacuation Exercise the day before the earthquake was a coincidence.

Last Thursday, March 23, as part of the “Exercise Caribe Wave 23 – A Caribbean Tsunami Warning Exercise,”, NEMO staged an imaginary scenario which simulated the sides of the Mount Pelée Volcano in Martinique collapsing on March 23, 2023 at 10:00 a.m. local time, generating a Tsunami which affected Port Elizabeth, Bequia.

Members of the business community, schools and other organizations participated in this exercise and evacuated to higher ground.

The exercise ran from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. while the initial dummy message for the scenario was issued at 10:00 a.m. local time by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) which acts as the CARIBE-Early Warning System Tsunami Service Provider.