Dave Creary had been in Medellin for two days when the floor started moving. He had arrived on the Saturday for a week's holiday and was on the 12th storey of a 17-storey hotel on Monday morning when a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia. "When I got up, the place was just shaking hard. I looked out of my window and saw buildings shaking," he told the Jamaica Gleaner. "It was chaos to get down the stairs from the 12th floor. While we're running down, it kept shaking." He got out. Three days later he said, "The energy and the vibe in the country is low."
By 13 August Colombia's government put the confirmed death toll at more than 265, with over 3,700 injured and more than 4,100 people missing. The quake was centred near San Jose del Palmar in Choco Department. It damaged more than 8,300 homes, destroyed over 1,100 of them, collapsed 48 buildings, and left 796 schools, 84 health centres and 73 roads needing repair across 12 departments. It was Colombia's strongest earthquake in a decade, felt in Bogota, Ecuador and Panama.
Choco sits where the Nazca plate slides beneath the South American plate, on the Pacific side of the continent. Jamaica sits on the northern edge of the Caribbean Plate, which has its own record of deadly earthquakes. Creary's stairwell is a useful prompt for the island he flew in from.
The Caribbean Plate's record: Kingston 1907, Haiti 2010, Cayman 2020
The northern edge of the Caribbean Plate is a chain of faults: the Oriente fault under eastern Cuba, the Septentrional fault under the Dominican Republic, the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault under Haiti and reaching into Jamaica, and the Cayman Trough between Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.
- 14 January 1907, Kingston: a magnitude 6.2 earthquake killed 800 to 1,000 people, left 10,000 homeless and destroyed 85 percent of the city's warehouse and business district through shaking and the fires that followed. A tsunami up to two metres high hit the north coast.
- 12 January 2010, Haiti: a magnitude 7.0 earthquake near Port-au-Prince, on or near the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault system. Haiti's government put deaths at 220,000 to 316,000; independent estimates run from 100,000 to about 160,000. It is among the deadliest natural disasters of this century.
- 28 January 2020, Cayman Trough: a magnitude 7.7 quake between Jamaica and Cuba, the strongest in the Caribbean since 1946. It triggered tsunami warnings from Mexico to the Cayman Islands and was felt in Miami, but caused no major damage.
- 2026: Jamaica's Earthquake Unit recorded felt tremors of magnitude 3.1 in January and 3.5 in June.
The Core Argument
Jamaica has a real monitoring network and the Caribbean has real catastrophe insurance. Neither gives a resident, a tourist or a hospital the seconds of warning between a fault slipping and the shaking arriving. AI can help close part of that gap, using sensors and institutions the region already has.
What Jamaica's monitoring network does, and what it cannot yet do
The Earthquake Unit at the University of the West Indies, Mona, runs Jamaica's seismic monitoring. It operates 14 to 15 broadband digital seismographs plus 11 community-level sensors across Kingston, St Thomas, St Catherine, Clarendon, Portland, St Ann, St James and Westmoreland, with six more sites identified. "Jamaica is quite advanced regionally. We are at the stage where we have upwards of 14 to 15 broadband digital seismographs," said the unit's head, Kevin Tankoo. The network supports fault mapping, site hazard assessments and a mobile app showing live waveform data.
It records earthquakes; it was not built to warn people before the shaking reaches them. Japan, Mexico and the US West Coast run systems that do. The Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) holds Earthquake Awareness Week each January, this year under the theme "Resilient Jamaica: We Weather the Storm and Brace for the Shake," and directs builders to the National Building Codes under the Building Act, 2018. Neither agency can currently tell a family in Half Way Tree to move away from a window before the shaking arrives.
CCRIF pays governments after a quake; it does not warn anyone
The region's strongest piece of earthquake infrastructure is financial. CCRIF SPC, formed in 2007 as the world's first multi-country, multi-peril parametric risk pool, covers earthquake, hurricane and excess rainfall risk for 19 Caribbean and 3 Central American governments. Its catastrophe model, SPHERA, last updated in 2019, combines hazard, exposure, vulnerability and loss modules. When an earthquake passes a pre-agreed intensity threshold in a member country, a payout is triggered without a months-long claims process. CCRIF reports 54 payouts totalling US$245 million, which reached more than 3.5 million people.
SPHERA tells a finance ministry how much money is due once an earthquake is over. It has nothing to say to someone on the 12th floor while the building is still moving.
Four places AI fits in Caribbean earthquake readiness
1. P-wave detection for early warning. Every earthquake sends out a fast, weaker P-wave first, followed by the slower S-wave that does the damage. Japan's national system (public since 2007) and Mexico's SASMEX detect the first wave and issue alerts before strong shaking arrives. Machine learning models, trained to estimate magnitude and shaking from the first seconds of data, are now being added to such systems. Jamaica's network is sparser than California's, but it is a starting point, and the 1907, 2010 and 2020 records give training and test data.
Warning time depends on distance. For a rupture in the Cayman Trough or along the fault towards Haiti, Kingston could get several seconds to a few tens of seconds, enough to drop, cover and hold on. For a quake directly under the city, as in 1907, the warning would be close to zero. That limit is the weakest part of the case for early warning in Kingston, and any pilot should be honest about it.
2. Damage triage from images. Colombia's teams are checking 796 schools, 84 health centres and thousands of homes mostly by sending people to look. Computer vision models comparing before-and-after satellite and drone images can flag likely collapses within hours, so rescue and inspection teams go to the worst sites first.
3. A better building inventory for CCRIF. SPHERA's exposure and vulnerability modules depend on building data. Regular satellite analysis of new construction, informal settlements and building condition would keep that inventory current and make payouts better matched to where damage falls.
4. Alerts for travellers. Creary had no way to know his hotel's stairwell or assembly point before the ground moved. The same detection system could push a short message through hotel, airline and mobile networks, in the language the traveller's phone is set to: which stairwell, which exit, which assembly point.
How the pieces would connect in Jamaica
The Earthquake Unit's stations detect a P-wave at two or more sites. A model estimates magnitude and expected shaking within a second or two. Alerts go at once to ODPEM's broadcast systems, mobile carriers, hotels, hospitals and schools. In the following hours, satellite and drone images feed a damage model that flags likely collapse sites for responders, and the same images update CCRIF's exposure data for the payout calculation. Every step has an institutional owner in Jamaica or the region already. The missing parts are the models and the links between them.
What to do next
- UWI Earthquake Unit and the Ministry responsible for science and technology: fund a 12-month machine learning P-wave pilot on the existing 14 to 15 stations, run silently alongside current operations, and publish how many real events it caught and how many false alarms it raised.
- ODPEM, with mobile carriers: agree the technical route for a cell broadcast alert now, so a working detection model has somewhere to send its warning. Test it during Earthquake Awareness Week in January.
- CCRIF SPC and member governments: commission a trial that updates SPHERA's building exposure data for one member country from recent satellite imagery, and compare the result with the current inventory.
- Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association members: add the evacuation stairwell and assembly point to the check-in message and room card in the guest's language, at no cost beyond an afternoon's work.
- Homeowners building or renovating: have the plans checked by a registered structural engineer against the National Building Codes before work starts.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should you run for the stairs while the building is still shaking?
No. Official advice in Jamaica and internationally is to drop, cover and hold on until the shaking stops, because most injuries come from falling objects and falls while moving. Stairwells can be damaged and crowded during shaking. Once it stops, leave by the stairs, never the lift, and go to the assembly point.
Why would Kingston get little or no warning from some earthquakes?
Early warning relies on detecting the fast P-wave before the damaging S-wave arrives, and near the epicentre the two arrive almost together. Places close to the rupture sit in a blind zone where no alert can beat the shaking. A quake on a fault directly under Kingston would give almost no warning, while one 100 kilometres or more away could give several seconds or more.
Does CCRIF insurance pay out to households?
No. CCRIF policies are held by governments, and payouts go to the national treasury for emergency response and recovery. Households and businesses need their own property insurance with earthquake cover. In the Caribbean this cover usually carries a separate catastrophe deductible set as a percentage of the sum insured, so check that figure on your policy schedule.
Can my phone already warn me about earthquakes?
Possibly. Google's Android Earthquake Alerts System uses the motion sensors in Android phones to detect shaking and sends alerts in countries where it has been switched on. On an Android phone, look under Settings for Safety and emergency, then Earthquake alerts; a missing option means the service has not been switched on in your country. It supplements national warnings and does not replace them.
Who issues tsunami warnings for Jamaica?
Regional tsunami alerts for the Caribbean come from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, which serves the UNESCO-coordinated Caribbean warning system, and ODPEM passes them on nationally. After strong shaking near the coast, do not wait for an official message: move inland or to high ground at once. The 1907 Kingston earthquake produced a tsunami on the north coast within hours.
How do I check whether my house meets Jamaica's building code?
Ask a structural engineer registered with Jamaica's Professional Engineers Registration Board to inspect the building and the approved plans. New work and major renovations need plans approved by your municipal corporation under the Building Act, 2018, which applies the National Building Codes. Older masonry houses with heavy roofs and weak links between walls and roof are the priority for a check.