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New York Tsunami Threat
The eastern seaboard of the United States is at risk of devastation from a gigantic 50 m high tidal wave, new research has revealed.Scientists at the Benfield Hazard Research Centre believe the catastrophe will be triggered by volcanic activity in the Canary Islands.
They claim geological instability on the island of La Palma means an eruption will generate a massive landslide which would create the wave as loose rock crashes into the ocean.
“It would be something like every single sector of the eastern coast being devastated by a category five hurricane simultaneously,” predicted Dr Simon Day from the Benfield Centre at University College London.
“There is good evidence, as there is in a number of other islands, that this rock is unstable.
“But La Palma is very much steeper than other places. So if it starts to fail it will fail dramatically causing one of these giant landslides and the resulting wave.”
Once the wave is formed it would sweep across the Atlantic at around 800 km per hour, the speed of a jumbo jet, reaching New York in just eight hours.
Initially the wave would be around 650 km high, according to research models.
It would lose height as it moved across the ocean, but would still be around 50 m tall by the time it crashed into the United States. Depending on local topography its impact could be felt up to 20 km inland.
As well as the eastern seaboard, Florida and the Caribbean would also be hit. And if the wave bends back and spreads out in a circular pattern from La Palma the coast of Western Europe would be another risk.
“The volcano is probably going to fail sometime between the next eruption and the next 20 eruptions,” added Dr Day. “The average interval between eruptions is a few decades to a couple of centuries. Therefore there is a collapse probability of up to around 5% in any one century. So it is a long term hazard, but one for which the consequences are catastrophic. It is very interesting to see how you might accommodate such an event in the insurance industry.”
The catastrophe prediction has been published in the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research and also forms the basis of a BBC Horizon documentary due to be screened tonight.
“It will happen, it‘s just a question of when,” said Professor Bill McGuire, also from the Benfield Centre.
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