Panama needs to invest between $1.5 million and $3 million to develop a national seismic early warning system that will allow for seconds of advance warning before an earthquake and activate protocols to protect lives.
The proposal includes incorporating that funding permanently into the state budget, instead of relying on extraordinary resources after an emergency.
The proposal was presented by Néstor Luque, director of the Institute of Geosciences at the University of Panama, who warned that the country needs to strengthen its capacity to monitor seismic activity and turn that knowledge into prevention tools.
Panama currently has 65 seismic stations, but not all of them operate at 100% capacity.
For Luque, this situation highlights the need to invest both in surveillance infrastructure and in a system that allows alerts to be issued seconds in advance, a margin that can be crucial to activating security measures before the most destructive seismic waves arrive.
The proposal gained relevance after the magnitude 7.5 earthquake that struck on October 9, which caused significant ground displacement along the fault system in the south of the country. In the weeks following the quake, specialists from the Institute of Geosciences documented approximately 1,271 aftershocks.
Luque maintained that the low number of fatalities associated with the event was not a matter of chance. He attributed it to a combination of factors, including the depth of the earthquake, the distance, the characteristics of the geological faults, and the condition of the buildings, as well as monitoring capabilities.
However, the challenge doesn’t end with installing more stations or developing an early warning system. The director of the Institute of Geosciences outlined two other priorities for reducing the country’s exposure to geological hazards.
One of these is to plan land use based on scientific principles. This involves having geological hazard maps that serve as a reference for deciding where and under what conditions schools, hospitals, housing, and new communities should be built.
The other is to strengthen the training of professionals in Earth sciences, stimulate the interest of young people in research and expand the technical and operational capabilities of the Institute of Geosciences.
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