Tsunami: Why America's Coast Would Be Toast

[indigobusiness]

It sounds like the plot of a fanciful Hollywood disaster movie. A dangerous volcano in the Canary Islands erupts, sends a giant tsunami travelling faster than a jet aircraft into the major population centres of America's east coast, killing tens of millions and wiping out New York and Washington DC.

But unlike the eruption in the 1997 film Volcano (which threatened in its tagline that 'the coast is toast') scientists believe the threat from the volcano of Cumbre Vieja on the island of La Palma is real, and that it could send a massive slab of rock twice the size of the Isle of Man crashing into the Atlantic.

The effect would be to generate a huge wave with the energy equivalent to the combined output of America's power stations working flat out for six months.

After travelling across 4,000 miles of the Atlantic for about nine hours the tsunami would hit the Caribbean islands and the east coasts of Canada and the US with devastating effect. It would stretch for many miles and sweep into the estuaries and harbours for up to 20 miles inland, destroying everything in its path.

Those scientists are warning that the US government is not taking the threat from Cumbre Vieja seriously enough and not enough is being done to monitor it. Professor Bill McGuire, the director of the Benfield Grieg Hazard Research Centre at University College, London, warned that Boston, New York, Washington DC and Miami could be virtually wiped out.

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/december2004/291204coastwouldbetoast.htm

[7th_Sephiroth]

1. if it wiped out dubya and cheney

on inaguration day i would be happy

[indigobusiness]

4. They could surf all the way to Hell..

on that wave.

[7th_Sephiroth]

6. and the world would cheer

and we would all sing hail, to president kerry

[indigobusiness]

2. My thanks to papau for this alternate view/rebuttal posted elsewhere

The discovery Channel show - and the UCSC paper - have been rejected.


The UCSC paper says http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~ward/papers/La_Palma_grl.pdf that A volcano west flank failure could put 150 to 500 km3 into the sea. At the max 500 km3, the wave that hits the Eastern US is 10 to 25 feet high, but Note that the 1971 volcanic eruption on La Palma in 1971 did not cause such a problem.

The paper below was released after the Discovery Channel Program:

The Discovery Channel has replayed a program on alleging potential destruction of coastal areas of the Atlantic by tsunami waves which might be generated in the near future by a volcanic collapse in the Canary Islands. Other reports have involved a smaller but similar catastrophe from Kilauea volcano on the island of Hawai`i. They like to call these occurences "mega tsunamis". We would like to halt the scaremongering from these unfounded reports. We wish to provide the media with factual information so that the public can be properly informed about actual hazards of tsunamis and their mitigation.


Here are a set of facts, agreed on by committee members, about the claims in these reports:


- While the active volcano of Cumbre Vieja on Las Palma is expected to erupt again, it will not send a large part of the island into the ocean, though small landslides may occur. The Discovery program does not bring out in the interviews that such volcanic collapses are extremely rare events, separated in geologic time by thousands or even millions of years.


- No such event - a mega tsunami - has occurred in either the Atlantic or Pacific oceans in recorded history. NONE.


- The colossal collapses of Krakatau or Santorin (the two most similar known happenings) generated catastrophic waves in the immediate area but hazardous waves did not propagate to distant shores. Carefully performed numerical and experimental model experiments on such events and of the postulated Las Palma event verify that the relatively short waves from these small, though intense, occurrences do not travel as do tsunami waves from a major earthquake.


- The U.S. volcano observatory, situated on Kilauea, near the current eruption, states that there is no likelihood of that part of the island breaking off into the ocean.


- These considerations have been published in journals and discussed at conferences sponsored by the Tsunami Society.

Some papers on this subject include:


"Evaluation of the threat of Mega Tsunami Generation From ....Volcanoes on La Palma ... and Hawaii", George Pararas-Carayannis, in Science of Tsunami Hazards, Vol 20, No.5, pages 251-277, 2002.


"Modeling the La Palma Landslide Tsunami", Charles L. Mader, in Science of Tsunami Hazards, Vol. 19, No. 3, pages 160-180, 2001.


"Volcano Growth and the Evolution of the Island of Hawaii", J.G. Moore and D.A.Clague, in the Geologic Society of America Bulletin, 104, 1992.


Committee members for this report include:


Mr. George Curtis, Hilo, HI (Committee Chairman) 808-963-6670
Dr. Tad Murty, Ottawa, Canada, 613-731-8900
Dr. Laura Kong, Honolulu, HI, 808-532-6422
Dr. George Pararas-Carayannis, Honolulu, HI, 808-943-1150
Dr. Charles L. Mader, Los Alamos, NM, 808-396-9855
and all can comment on this or other tsunami matters.


For information regarding the Tsunami Society and its publications, scientific papers on tsunamis, visit:

http://sthjournal.org /

[Pacifist Patriot]

3. Eeek! Living just a couple of miles from the Atlantic coast as the

crow flies, that freaks me out. Three hurricanes in six weeks this fall was enough.

[indigobusiness]

7. It's a serious threat, but could be millennia away from occuring...

or, maybe not.

[Pacifist Patriot]

9. That helps with the planning.

;)

[indigobusiness]

10. I find it interesting in its own right...

the catastrophic potential just adds drama. What a horrific reality it would be...I shudder to think, but never have I thought it was a good plan to insert heads in sand. I have hid under the covers, at times. I'll admit that. The Earth is a marvelous planet, in ALL her terrible glory.

[Pacifist Patriot]

11. I do find our planet amazing.

Natural disaster movies have always held a morbid fascination for me. The idea that creation culminates with humanity is one of ridiculous hubris. Aren't we supposed to get hit by an asteroid in 2026?

[indigobusiness]

12. We'll kill ourselves off

before then.

[illflem]

5. What could you do anyways?

Even if there is enough time to evacuate every single person the property damage would be incredible, millions homeless, unemployed for years, etc. Might be better off dead the way things would be afterwards.
It's one of those things that does no good to worry or even plan about.

[indigobusiness]

8. Forewarned

is forearmed.