On 6월 11, 2024, the community of Cahuita celebrated their Tsunami Ready recognition ceremony. Cahuita is the first community on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica to achieve Tsunami Ready status, joining 10 other communities on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast that have been recognized since 2017.
“To achieve this recognition, any community in the world must fulfill 12 requirements in tsunami assessment, preparedness, and response. This includes a tsunami evacuation map, deployment of tsunami evacuation route signs, outreach activities, and a tsunami evacuation drill. We are very proud of the work Cahuita has accomplished to receive this recognition. We hope they can maintain it and renew it, and that other communities in Talamanca municipality and Limon province will follow their example,” said Silvia Chacon-Barrantes, Coordinator of SINAMOT, National Tsunami Monitoring System, of the National University.
The official ceremony was attended by Christa von Hillebrandt-Andrade, Deputy Director of the International Tsunami Information Center – Caribbean Office (ITIC-CAR); Annie Vargas, liaison officer of the National Emergency Commission (CNE); as well as Martín Parada, Vice-President of the National University.
Tsunami Ready is a recognition programme of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (UNESCO-IOC) which encourages communities – including all stakeholders, such as the tourism sector – to comply with a set of guidelines to improve tsunami preparedness.
The original article was published on the website of the National University.
Cahuita National Park is part of the Ocean Decade Project ‘Tsunami and climatic RR at protected areas in Costa Rica’.
