In the wake of two powerful earthquakes that struck Panama and Venezuela in recent weeks, the University of the West Indies’ leading seismology expert has issued a renewed call for Caribbean nations to embed natural hazard preparedness as a permanent national priority.
Dr. Erouscilla Joseph, director of the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre (UWI SRC) based in Trinidad, told local outlet Barbados TODAY that the recent tectonic events have reignited critical conversations around community readiness, inter-agency emergency response coordination, and the structural resilience of Caribbean infrastructure. She emphasized that the region’s geological positioning makes it inherently prone to a wide spectrum of concurrent threats, not just seismic activity.
“We live in an inherently multi-hazard setting,” Joseph explained. “It is not only earthquakes we face — we also contend with volcanoes, hurricanes, intense storms, and flooding. These are daily risks we live with, so our planning has to adopt a comprehensive multi-hazard approach.”
Geologically, the two recent major quakes occurred across different segments of the complex tectonic plate network that surrounds the Caribbean Plate, the large slowly shifting slab of the Earth’s crust that underlies much of the Caribbean region. Panama sits at the convergence of the Caribbean, Cocos, Nazca, and South American plates, with a small microplate nestled between these tectonic masses. While nearby subduction zones (where one tectonic plate slides beneath another) drive regional seismic activity, the recent Panama earthquake originated from strike-slip movement, where rock masses slide horizontally along a fault line.
In northern Venezuela, the earthquake stemmed from the same type of strike-slip interaction between the Caribbean and South American plates, where long-building tectonic stress releases suddenly in the form of a major quake.
Though UWI SRC’s seismic monitoring networks focus primarily on the Lesser Antilles and do not directly track fault activity in Central America, Joseph noted the tectonic processes driving earthquakes in Panama and Venezuela are nearly identical to those shaping seismic risk along the Caribbean plate boundary. The 7.7-magnitude Panama quake, in particular, occurred in a subduction zone geologically similar to the eastern Caribbean subduction zone that the Lesser Antilles island chain sits on.
A key characteristic of large tectonic events, Joseph explained, is the extended sequence of aftershocks that follow as tectonic plates readjust to their new positions. The two major quakes that struck Venezuela in August have already produced a long aftershock sequence, a pattern that seismologists commonly observe in active tectonic zones. “These aftershocks can continue for weeks or even months before the plates return to their normal steady rate of movement,” Joseph said, drawing a parallel to active zones within the Pacific Ring of Fire, where subduction processes regularly produce prolonged aftershock sequences.
Joseph clarified that tectonic disruption in one part of the globe does not automatically translate to increased immediate seismic risk along distant, unrelated fault lines. Seismic activity in Panama and Venezuela does not mean the Eastern Caribbean faces a higher near-term risk of a major quake than it normally does, she stressed. Instead, the events serve as a critical reminder that the region’s inherent risk has not changed, and preparedness must be a continuous effort, not just a short-term response to a recent disaster.
“Disruption in one region does not automatically translate to new tectonic stress in other areas,” she said. “But the processes that drive seismic activity here are the same subduction-related movements happening across our region. We are always exposed to this type of movement, so we must always stay alert for large events. This does not mean our risk has gone up because of what happened in Venezuela or Panama. We have always had this level of risk, because we live in a subduction zone setting, and these events are a natural consequence of that.”
Joseph has advised regional governments and disaster management agencies to take concrete, long-term action: updating and enforcing modern building codes, reinforcing critical public infrastructure, and carrying out regular community evacuation drills. As the Caribbean grapples with overlapping climate and geological threats — from hurricane and tropical storm activity to volcanic eruptions — experts stress that risk reduction requires coordinated action across national government departments, emergency agencies, and local communities.
These efforts cannot stop at short-term public awareness campaigns, Joseph added. Preparedness measures need to be embedded into long-term government infrastructure planning, local community development blueprints, and institutional emergency response frameworks. “When we talk about preparedness, it has to be comprehensive,” she said. “That is the only way we can build more resilient Caribbean societies.”