The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was the most active season in recorded history, with 28 tropical storms of which 15 became hurricanes. Of these, seven strengthened into major hurricanes: 2 reached Category 3 strength, 1 Category 4 and a record four reached Category 5 strength – Emily, Katrina, Rita et Wilma –. Three years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, Gustav and Ike caused widespread damage in the summer of 2008 across the Caribbean, notably Haiti, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and the US, in one of the mostly costly hurricane seasons in history, likely to reach $25 billion. In contrast, the years 2009, 2010 and 2011 were relatively spared from extreme cyclonic events in the force 4 to 5 range of magnitude. The continual and active presence of tropical storms across the region meant that different countries were obliged to maintain an unavoidable level of vigilance in a zone where, since 1998, more than 20 very violent cyclones had alone caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage and tens of thousands of deaths.

Globally, the Caribbean remains a zone of foremost importance both in terms of volcanic and cyclonic activity. Around 18 volcanoes remain periodically or permanently active in the isthmus. It is essentially within this geographical zone, stretching from Guatemala to Nicaragua, that the latter are concentrated. In the Antillian island arc volcanic activity is equally in evidence, which in the case of the Montserrat eruption in 1997 saw the destruction of half the island, forcing the inhabitants to flee, a reminder that such events are ever present. Along the isthmus, their greater number and more frequent occurrence is often associated with mud flows, heavy rains and flooding.

Since 1985, some 21 major earthquakes, registering over 5.5 on the Richter scale, have been documented in the Caribbean zone. The most violent occurred in Mexico, El Salvador and Martinique, and most recently with consequences given wide media coverage, in Haiti. The 1985 earthquake in Mexico caused around 100 000 deaths and three times as many injured. In Haiti, the recent earthquake in Port-au-Prince (12 January 2010) caused more than 250 000 deaths in one day, and nearly 300 000 injured in addition to thousands of displaced persons with no shelter.