Tsunami watch needed urgently for real this time

Please correct me if I am wrong, but after the massive earthquake near Sumatra, near Banda Aceh in 2004, did not the Government of Jamaica make commitments with the Government of the United States of America to commence the construction of a tsunami early warning system in the Caribbean, mainly due to the fact that the entire region is a set of active subduction zones and plates?

It seems my bad memory is not so bad after all, as according to the article “Jamaica Tsunami alert centre on Fast track” published Wednesday January 24, 2007, The Jamaica Gleaner, there was indeed such a proposal on the table to implement just such a system as Local Government Minister, Dean Peart, had signed an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) and would have been approved by the then Attorney-General thus paving the way for the construction of such a facility which would have nine (9) sensors or stations placed undersea with a buoy marking the location of the station. But it wasn’t

This is interesting, as we are now back in the same situation again, making more eloquent speeches after the scares of the Haitian and Chilean earthquakes and the disgust and wounded pride of the Chileans when the people were shown on television looting after the earthquake, despite aiming to become a first world Latin American State as stated in the article “Chile troops, police attack post-quake looters”, published Tuesday, March 2^nd 2010, The Jamaica Observer, (AP).

The dire warnings from our body representing the engineers frightening us out of our wits with the possibility of total annihilation of Kingston as stated in the article “Earthquake Fright” published Tuesday, March 2^nd 2010 by Patrick Forrester, The Jamaica Observer.

We all seem to have forgotten this and like black footed ferrets in the Arizona Desert we stand aloof, little noses wrinkled in consternation contending with what apparently seems to be foremost in our minds, that is the possibility of losing our good relationship (and visas!) with the United States of America due to our non-compliance and foot-dragging in extraditing Christopher “Dudus” Coke as stated in the article “Dudus Bugged”, published Sunday 7^th March 2010, Cover Story, The Herald.

There were murmurings about the intention to build one such, but this seems to have been shelved again and all the talk of the University of the West Indies getting Government of Jamaica assistance to purchase needed digital equipment to better help monitor and warn or earthquakes and tsunamis was just only that - talk.

Granted with an earthquake on land one wonders how one is able to “warn” of something so sudden and with no precursors, save to just duck and cover before you are buried alive. At least with a tsunami, with offshore warning stations that detect an undersea quake, once detected, the information can be relayed to people living on the coastal areas to move further inland, depending on how far out the earthquake struck.

The learned PhD’s (not me though, as I am just the learned John Public) from the University of the West Indies who it seems should have been pushing the idea to build once such systems or upgrade the ageing analog earthquake monitoring system to an all digital one have also fallen quiet. Everyone is talking about Dudus, nobody it talking about 70% of Kingston being destroyed.

Thus it would seem a role can be played in this endeavor to better equip the people of Jamaica, and this is for the Telecoms Providers to provide the usage of their networks to relay this information quickly to people warning of an impending tsunami. The Government of Jamaica, must however foot the bill for this project, which I hope, will not be a case of too little or too late when it comes to forward planning on the part of disaster preparedness on their part.

The Big Three Telecoms Providers stand ready to assist the Government of Jamaica in the provision of the data network facilities necessary to implement such an early warning service, but with the budgetary constraint imposed by the IMF, one wonders if we will ever get to see this early warning system built, especially as we have at present such strained relations with our neighbour to the north.