By SANCHESKA BROWN

Tribune Staff Reporter

sbrown@tribunemedia.net

A TEST conducted by the National Emergency Management Agency yesterday caused widespread panic and hysteria when residents believed that a tsunami was headed for the Bahamas.

The test of the Bahamas’ emergency services was in conjunction with UNESCO that decided to broaden the tsunami readiness of all countries, including territories in the Caribbean.

At approximately 12:30pm NEMA issued a notice alerting the media of the drill and attached a “mock advisory” that the Bahamas was under a tsunami watch.

According to the test advisory the tsunami was expected to reach the Bahamas at 2:02pm with San Salvador being the first island hit at 2:08 and Bimini the last at 3:12pm.

Despite the advisory highlighting that it was a test, several times, news of a “real‘‘ tsunami hitting the Bahamas began to spread, causing businesses to close and some schools to let students out early.

Several terrified Bahamians expressed their concern on social media warning other residents of “impending doom” while others criticized the way it was handled by the relevant agencies.

One person wrote: “This is inhumane how this ‘test’ was done. I am in Long Island. There are lots of elderly people here, there are elderly tourist guests here, and this ‘test‘ almost killed them. They are in shock. What a crazy way to do this. The school children are in tears! Do you all realize what you have done? The next time, God forbid something do happen, who is going to believe this? This was on National Radio. Think Bahamas! This is real people you are dealing with!”

Another person wrote: “Very poorly organized and followed through with that is for sure. The schools and other institutions should have been notified beforehand. Notify the necessary personnel so when the alert comes out, you can go through the motions with your school of a ‘test’ drill, but make it very clear that it is a test.”

Speaking with The Tribune, NEMA Director Captain Stephen Russell said every message that was sent to the media said the warning was a test and the public was not informed beforehand because they wanted to make it “as realistic as possible.”

“It was just a test and we made that clear. People hearing information tend to leave out some parts, but we sent the same script to all the media. When I spoke to ZNS I read from the script. We did not want people to know beforehand even my information officer was unaware until I called her,” he said.

“The MET department is the country’s focal point in a disaster. Once they get the information they run their analysis, craft something, and send it to us and that was what we send. In the test we did yesterday we said test in five different spots just to avoid panic. The point was to test media responses and see how fast we can disseminate the information to every island before the first island is impacted and that was achieved.”

Captain Russell said NEMA will record the findings of this exercise to determine what should be changed in the event of a real tsunami.

The Caribbean has been hit by 75 tsunamis in the past five centuries, accounting for nearly 10 per cent of the tidal waves registered in the world during that period.