Institute of Meteorology denies rumor of tsunami that would affect eastern Cuba

HAVANA, Cuba, Jun 10 (ACN) The Cuban Institute of Meteorology made it clear on a Twitter post that the rumors that a tsunami is on its way to the eastern province of Guantanamo are totally false, and called Internet users to spread the word in order to avoid chaos and panic.

According to specialists from the National Center for Seismological Research (CNIS), for a phenomenon of this type to occur there must be an earthquake of great magnitude in the sea, with a vertical movement in the blocks in the fault, to produce the so-called piston effect capable of lifting a mass of water and form large waves.

Among the places with geological characteristics conducive to the occurrence of tsunamis is the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, which includes the east coast of South America and also Japan and Indonesia, since all the limits where a collision and the ensuing process called subduction are more likely.

Although tsunami-generating earthquakes have been registered in the north of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, there is no evidence of Cuba ever being hit by a damaging one.

CNIS records have it that there have been strong earthquakes in the southern part of Cuba, but they only have caused at best slight sea disturbances, never a tsunami.

This is the case of the earthquakes off the coast of Santiago de Cuba in 1766 and 1852, and the one in Jamaica on January 14, 1907 that caused a submarine landslide followed by a tsunami, but there is no evidence that it affected Cuba either.