Expert warns Caribbean of tidal wave catastrophe

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

LONDON, England: World leaders were on Monday urged to wake up to the threat from a collapsing mountain which at any moment could unleash a massive tidal wave on the Caribbean and the east coast of North America.

A chunk of a volcano in the Canary Islands is on the brink of falling into the sea, a leading expert warned. According to Britain’s Press Association, scientists believe it could break away when the Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma next erupts.

If that happened a giant tsunami, or massive wave, reaching heights of more than 500 feet would be sent racing across the Atlantic at the speed of a passenger jet. Around nine hours later it would hit the Caribbean islands and the east coasts of Canada and the US.

After travelling 4,000 miles the wave would be lower and wider but still 66ft – 164ft high.

Leading expert Professor Bill McGuire said Monday that close monitoring might at best provide two weeks warning of the disaster. But although the danger had been known about since the 1990s, no-one was keeping a proper watch on the mountain.

The two or three seismographs left to pick up signs of movement in the rock were not capable of detecting a looming eruption weeks in advance.

“What we need now is an integrated volcanic monitoring set up to give maximum warning of a coming eruption,” said Prof McGuire, director of the Benfield Grieg Hazard Research Centre at University College London.

“The US government must be aware of the La Palma threat. They should certainly be worried, and so should the island states in the Caribbean that will really bear the brunt of a collapse.

“They’re not taking it seriously. Governments change four to five years and generally they’re not interested in these things.”

A monitoring station equipped to look deep into the heart of the mountain and spot the early signs of an eruption might cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, said Prof McGuire. Speaking at a briefing in London, Prof McGuire said the mountain could split apart literally the next time the volcano erupts.

Cumbre Vieja last erupted in 1949. The next eruption could occur this year, or not for the next 1,000 years. Any evacuation plan would have to be based on the forecast of an eruption, since once the collapse happened it would be too late.

Yet it could be a false alarm. Several eruptions could come and go before one of them sent the mountain side crashing into the sea in a matter of minutes. Unlike a normal wave, the tsunami would not break rapidly but just keep coming, said Prof McGuire.

Trying to stop the mountain collapsing was simply out of the question, he said. He had done a calculation which showed it would take 35 million years to dig out the dangerous part of the volcano and move it away.

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