SVG was never under tsunami- NEMO Director

St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) was never under threat from a tsunami when a 7.6 magnitude earthquake, struck in the Caribbean Sea north of Honduras, near the Cayman Islands on Saturday February 8, 2025.

As a matter of fact, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC), in accordance with international protocols, sent an alert in less than 10 minutes of the earthquake’s occurrence.

What came late, according to Director of the National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO), was not the information that the earthquake met the key parameters, a magnitude of 7.0 or greater and a depth of less than 100 kilometres, that could potentially trigger a tsunami, but that a wave was generated.

“We did receive the alert in terms of a tsunami threat or a tsunami advisory from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre.

“You have different stages where they send different alerts but in terms of whether a tsunami wave was actually generated, we did not know that until much later, when it was actually picked up off a tide gauge off Mexico…which is almost over an hour later,” Forbes explained, while noting that the wave was less than a meter.

“We got all the alerts from the time the earthquake occurred,” Forbes stressed, while adding that with the information they received, they could have made a decision about whether or not there needed to be evacuations because of a tsunami threat.

“…the science already tells what type of zone or type of fault that is, whether it’s a subduction or whether it’s the strike fault…so you will have an idea whether it’s quick that you need to make an alert.

“We were never under threat from that particular earthquake…but we were monitoring and saying ‘what happened?’…because what usually happens is within half an hour, then they will send out another alert and show you if tsunami waves are generated,” Forbes explained. She noted that this information came about 90 minutes after and, “we were kind of startled by that fact”.

Forbes stressed that the National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO), is committed to tsunami preparedness, but critical gaps in the region’s monitoring capabilities need to be addressed with more equipment, and the delay in confirming the presence of tsunami waves underscores the need for more instruments in the region.

She said what is needed is sufficient tide gauges and buoys that can detect oceanic disturbances in real-time, but noted that these instruments are expensive to install and maintain, and in the case of SVG, the one located in Chateaubelair is being tampered with, and sometimes even damaged when thieves remove the solar panel.

“They go and open it and interfere with it so we have had to replace things, and keep replacing…when you go sometimes, it’s open and you have to lock it back.

“We had to put on an extra lock on it and so on,” Forbes stressed, as she urged culprits to leave the equipment alone.