The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) is an inter-regional supportive network of independent emergency units throughout the Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

 region. Formed on September 1, 2005 as the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency (CDERA) it under-went a name change to CDEMA in September 2009.

The participating member states and agencies of the CDEMA include:

Country	Organisation
	Department of Disaster Management (DDM)
	National Office of Disaster Services (NODS)
	Disaster Management Unit
	Department of Emergency Management
	National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO)
	Department of Disaster Management
	Office of Disaster Management (ODM)
Grenada	National Disaster Management Agency (NaDMA)
Guyana	Civil Defense Commission
Haiti	Civil Protection Directorate
	Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM)
	Disaster Management Coordination Agency
	National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA)
	National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO) Saint Lucia National Emergency Management Organisation Saint Lucia's National Emergency Management Organisation is responsible for disaster preparedness and disaster response co-ordination.-History:Disaster Management, though called by numerous names over the years has manifested itself...
	National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO)
Suriname	National Coordination Center For Disaster Relief (NCCR)
	Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM)
Turks and Caicos Islands	Department of Disaster Management & Emergencies

Activities

In recent years the role of the CDEMA has been mostly to provide assistance to member territories after the passage of particularly fierce hurricanes. Such roll out of CDEMA personnel was witnessed for Grenada

Grenada

Grenada is an island country and Commonwealth Realm consisting of the island of Grenada and six smaller islands at the southern end of the Grenadines in the southeastern Caribbean Sea...

 and Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

 in early September, 2004 after the passage of Hurricane Ivan

Hurricane Ivan

Hurricane Ivan was a large, long-lived, Cape Verde-type hurricane that caused widespread damage in the Caribbean and United States. The cyclone was the ninth named storm, the sixth hurricane and the fourth major hurricane of the active 2004 Atlantic hurricane season...

.

During the mid 1990s, the sudden eruption by the Soufriere Hills volcano in Montserrat

Montserrat

Montserrat is a British overseas territory located in the Leeward Islands, part of the chain of islands called the Lesser Antilles in the West Indies. This island measures approximately long and wide, giving of coastline...

 also caused the CDEMA to spring into action, to provide additional support to the people on the island. The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency (CDEMA) also regularly monitors the Soufriere Hills volcano, in addition to the active undersea volcano named Kick-'em-Jenny

Kick-'em-Jenny

Kick-'em-Jenny is an active submarine volcano or seamount on the Caribbean Sea floor, located north of the island of Grenada and about west of Ronde Island in the Grenadines. Kick-'em-Jenny rises above the sea floor on the steep inner western slope of the Lesser Antilles ridge...

 to the north of Grenada

Grenada

Grenada is an island country and Commonwealth Realm consisting of the island of Grenada and six smaller islands at the southern end of the Grenadines in the southeastern Caribbean Sea...

.

In situations of emergency where a military force might be needed, members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States

Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States

The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States , created in 1981, is an inter-governmental organisation dedicated to economic harmonisation and integration, protection of human and legal rights, and the encouragement of good governance between countries and dependencies in the Eastern Caribbean...

 and Barbados

Barbados

Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles. It is in length and as much as in width, amounting to . It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about east of the islands of Saint...

 may likely turn to the Eastern Caribbean Regional Security System

Regional Security System

The Regional Security System is an international agreement for the defence and security of the eastern Caribbean region.The Regional Security System was created out of a need for collective response to security threats, which were impacting on the stability of the region in the late 1970s and...

http://www.rss.org.bb/ for assistance, while then possibly using the CDEMA as a backup support agency to the RSS.