The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has just warned Malta that there is a ‘100 per cent chance’ of a tsunami hitting its shores ‘within 30 years’. 

Therefore, UNESCO said, at-risk coastal towns in the Mediterranean Sea need to get ‘tsunami-ready’. 

The localities most at-risk of being affected by a tsunami are low-lying and close to the coast. These include Birzebbuga, Marsaxlokk, St Thomas Bay, Marsascala, Msida, Gzira, Salini, and Xemxija. 

In fact, Marsaxlokk has already been selected as the island's first ‘tsunami ready’ location after undergoing an evacuation exercise last November. 

“In the Mediterranean, there is no question about it: it is not if; it’s when,” said Denis Chang Seng, programme specialist of the Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Tsunami Early Warning and Mitigation System in the North-eastern Atlantic, the Mediterranean and connected seas.

UNESCO's warning concerns one-metre waves in the whole Mediterranean region. These detrimental waves are expected to lift and displace vehicles off the roads and produce 65 km/h water walls.

Malta’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission project, CoastWAVE, will allow the islands to join six other Mediterranean countries to be categorized as tsunami-ready after installing a tsunami-alerting system in each district. 

UNESCO, the University of Malta, and the Civil Protection Department (CPD), are preparing a set of initiatives leading up to a nationwide tsunami-ready strategy, said seismologist Pauline Galea from the university’s Department of Geosciences.