Networks of seismic recorders are operated by the Seismic Research Units of the University of the West Indies (UWI) in St. Augustine, Trinidad (15) and Kingston, Jamaica (10), as well as the University of Puerto Rico (18). Extensive up-to- date eart hquake information is available from the National Geophysical Data Service (NGDS) of NOAA in Colorado ( Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 ) Shepherd et al. (1993) report that the number of earthquakes recorded in the Caribbean has gone up exponentially from single digits in the period 1900 to 1940 to tens from 1940-1970 and hundreds after that, reaching 1000 around 1990 (Ambeh, 1993, p. 51, Fig. 3). Earthquakes have been predicted based on the assumption that they follow a Poisson Distribution, but the inherent assumptio n of random distribution in time is questionable in the light of the preceding sentence and two other articles in Ambeh (1993) pertaining to temporal distributions of Caribbean earthquakes.
The Caribbean comprises some 7% of the World's seismicity, but whereas worldwide an average ten thousand people per year die from earthquakes (Bolt et al., 1975) the loss of life in the Caribbean is relatively small. One of the better known exceptions i s that of the 1692 Port Royal earthquake in Jamaica which involved spontaneous liquefaction because of the energy transmission through alluvial deposits (Clark, 1995).
A series of recent earthquakes in California, Japan and Sakhalin has stressed the importance of building codes. Although the Uniform Code for the Caribbean is lauded by Chin & Pantazopoulou (1993, p. 284) it is not easily available and generally has not b een incorporated in law; recently, however, Barbados enacted its own code, based largely on the Uniform Code (Trinidad Bureau of Standards, 1995). Structural damage to UWI's Mona Campus, Jamaica, by a 5.4 magnitude 1993 earthquake is detailed by Carby (19 93). In our 1995 survey, 74 percent of the respondents rated earthquakes hazards a low of 1 on a scale up to 5 (most serious), while 9% of respondents (from 6 different islands) gave a rating of 2, 3% a rating of 3, and only one person (and that St. Croix) a r ating of 4; the remaining 14% answered N.A., presumably no risk.
World Seismic Safety Initiativeor
