February 2013


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How the region knew it was shaking

The countries bounding the Caribbean Basin were known to be vulnerable to devastating earthquakes from the time of the first European settlements, with accounts of the first such events beginning to appear early in the 16th Century. All the countries in the region were colonies of one or other of the European colonising powers, which brought with them not only their languages and culture, but their architecture. Within the first few decades, the islands had been transformed into villages, towns and cities patterned after the various European models, including the beautiful stone structures known there. The devastation that could be wrought by the large earthquakes that sometimes occurred in the region soon became well known.

The volcanic threat, on the other hand, was well known on the western side of the Caribbean Basin. More slowly, a similar threat on the eastern side emerged as several of the islands would experience episodic high level seismic activity associated with volcanic centres. It was one such episode, occurring in Nevis in 1951-1952, following a similar episode in Montserrat in the 1930s that prompted the recommendation by Dr Patrick Willmore that an agency for monitoring the regional, volcanic activity be established. This recommendation became the Volcano Research Department, later renamed the Seismic Research Unit to reflect that earthquakes in general would be investigated and then, to more accurately reveal its status within the UWI hierarchy, ‘Unit’ was changed to ‘Centre’ and from 2008 the agency responsible for monitoring earthquake and volcanic activity in the English-speaking Eastern Caribbean and also an integral part of the effort to establish a tsunami warning centre became known as the Seismic Research Centre.