Kingston.– This month marks the 102nd anniversary of an earthquake that measured a relatively mild 6.5 on the Richter scale, but killed over 800 people in Kingston, Jamaica. The 1907 earthquake occurred on January 14 at 3:32 p.m. on a hot, cloudless Monday and its was preceded by the sound of a mighty wind and followed by the sound of a train roaring in a tunnel, The Gleaner newspaper recalls today.

The ground shook so violently that people and buildings were tossed about like puppets. In less than a minute, Kingston was flattened, with hundreds lying dead or dying buried beneath piles of rubble. Twenty minutes later, the devastation was exacerbated as fire engulfed the streets of Kingston and raged continuously for four days.

According to the newspaper, experts from the University of North Carolina and University of Texas in the United States (US) believe they have evidence of at least 10 significant tsunamis in the northern Caribbean since 1492.

All 10 have been triggered by earthquakes caused by friction along the boundary of the North American and Caribbean tectonic plates. This boundary, which lies along the north coast of Hispaniola, extends for 3,200 kilometers from Central America to the Lesser Antilles.

All earthquakes of 7.0 magnitude or greater on the Richter scale have the capability of creating a tsunami, and within the last 500 years, there have been at least 12 global earthquakes of such magnitude. The last major Caribbean tsunami took place in 1946 and killed about 100 people at Matanzas, near Nagua in the Dominican Republic.