- It has everything you could wish for in a cliche-ridden
disaster movie. A beautiful volcanic island in the Atlantic is on the brink
of catastrophic collapse, threatening to unleash giant waves that will
wreak havoc around the globe within hours. And while scientists try in
vain to make their concerns heard, the world's governments look the other
way.
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- But yesterday a leading expert claimed the doom-laden
scenario was not only real but was being almost completely ignored by people
in power.
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- Bill McGuire, the director of the Benfield Grieg Hazard
Research Centre at University College London, said a huge chunk of rock,
roughly the size of the Isle of Man, was on the brink of breaking off the
volcanic island of La Palma in the Canaries.
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- When - Professor McGuire says it is not a matter of if
- the rock plunges into the ocean it will trigger giant waves called mega-tsunamis.
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- Travelling at speeds of up to 560mph, the huge walls
of water will tear across the ocean and hit islands and continents, leaving
a trail of destruction.
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- Mega-tsunami waves are much longer than the ones we are
used to.
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- "When one of these comes in, it keeps on coming
for 10 to 15 minutes," Prof McGuire said.
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- "It's like a huge wall of water that just keeps
coming."
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- Computer models of the island's collapse show the first
regions to be hit, with waves topping 100 metres (330ft), will be the neighbouring
Canary Islands. Within a few hours the west coast of Africa will be battered
with similar-sized waves.
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- Between nine and 12 hours after the island collapses,
waves between 20 and 50 metres high will have crossed 4,000 miles of ocean
to crash into the Caribbean islands and the eastern seaboard of the US
and Canada.
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- The worst-hit will be harbours and estuaries, which will
channel the waves inland. The loss of life and destruction to property
will probably be immense, according to Prof McGuire.
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- Britain would not escape entirely, he added. Waves of
around 10 metres are likely to strike the south coast four to five hours
after the island collapses, causing damage to seaside resorts and ports.
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- Such devastating natural disasters are rare, occurring
on average every 10,000 years. But La Palma could collapse much sooner
than that. "The thing about La Palma is we know it's on the move now,"
Prof McGuire said.
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- The island came to the attention of scientists in 1949
when its volcano, Cumbre Vieja, erupted, causing a huge chunk of its western
flank to drop four metres into the ocean. Scientists believe the chunk
of land is still slipping slowly into the water, and say another eruption
is likely to make the entire western flank collapse. "When it goes,
it will likely collapse in around 90 seconds," Prof McGuire said.
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- Precarious
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- Despite the potential scale of the threat, little is
being done to monitor the geological activity of La Palma. Only a few seismometers
have been set up on the precarious western flank of the island, which do
not provide enough information to predict when another eruption might occur.
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- "It's really a worrying situation," Prof McGuire
said. "It will almost certainly go during an eruption. The problem
is that with just a few seismometers on the island, we may not get the
notice we need."
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- The scientist called for an international effort to install
more sophisticated sensors on the island, as well as global positioning
satellite units to detect how quickly the land mass was falling into the
ocean. "We need to have better monitoring so we know when an eruption
is about to happen," he said. Such a system could cost as little as
a few hundred thousand dollars.
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- "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.
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- "They're not taking it seriously. Governments change
every four to five years and generally they're not interested in these
things."
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- Even with new monitoring equipment in place, La Palma
presents a difficult problem for those charged with mitigating against
natural disasters.
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- Little can be done to protect against the waves produced
when La Palma collapses. Barriers would not be able to sustain the battering,
and breaking the island apart before it collapses is either too dangerous
or time-consuming.
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- New sensors could warn of an impending eruption two weeks
in advance. But no one knows whether the island will collapse during the
next eruption, or in an eruption that will not happen for centuries.
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- Ordering mass evacuations would have a huge financial
impact that could cause resentment if it turned out to be a false alarm.
The disaster could affect up to 100 million people from the coast of Africa
to the Canary islands and the east coast of North America.
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- "The future president of the US has got to make
a call at some point, that when La Palma erupts, what is he going to do?"
Prof McGuire said.
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- "Is he going to evacuate all the major cities on
the east coast? If he gets it wrong, nobody's ever going to pay attention
again and he'll be out of a job."
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/naturaldisasters/story/0,7369,1279813,00.html
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