The Caribbean and Florida, one of the most popular vacation locations for US, Canadian, Europeans and other tourists is considered a real risk area for another major tsunami by scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the American Geophysical Union.
With nearly twenty million people now living in this tourist region and a major earthquake occurring on average every 50 years, scientists say it is not a question of if it will happen but when.
In the past 500 years a dozen major earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater have occurred in the Caribbean near Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the island of Hispaniola, shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and several have generated tsunamis. The most recent major earthquake, a magnitude 8.1 in 1946, resulted in a tsunami that killed a reported 1,600 people.
Scientists are calling for the establishment of tsunami early warning systems in the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean, and better public education about the real tsunami threats in these regions. Also see recent report in Sun Sentinel at: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/editorial/sfl-edittdtsunamijan31,0,5039898.story?coll=sfla-news-editorial
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