The purpose of the exercise is to improve the Tsunami Warning System effectiveness along the coasts of the Caribbean and Adjacent Regions. The exercise provides an opportunity for the corresponding emergency management organizations to exercise their operational lines of communications, review their tsunami response procedures and promote tsunami preparedness.
Regular exercising of response plans is critical to maintain readiness for an emergency. This is particularly true for the Caribbean and Adjacent regions, where tsunamis are infrequent but can be of very high impact.
The Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Tsunami and Other Coastal Hazards Warning System for the Caribbean and Adjacent Regions decided to conduct exercises named CARIBE WAVE on an annual basis.
At its Twelfth Session in, Puntarenas, Costa Rica (10-12 May 2017), the ICG/CARIBE-EWS recommended that Exercise CARIBE WAVE 18 take place on 15 March 2018, with three hypothetical scenarios.
The initial dummy messages for the three scenarios will be issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) on March 15, 2018 at 14:00 UTC and will be disseminated over all its standard broadcast channels.
1) The first scenario simulates a tsunami generated by a magnitude Mw 8.6 earthquake located along the Southern Lesser Antilles.
2) The second scenario simulates a tsunami generated by a magnitude Mw 8.1 earthquake located along the Caribbean coast of Colombia.
3) The third scenario simulates a tsunami generated by a magnitude Mw 7.6 earthquake off the West coast of Puerto Rico.
