Volcano could flatten US cities

By STEVE CONNOR

A volcano in the Canary Islands which could send a wave as high as Nelson's Column crashing into the major population centres of America's east coast is not being closely monitored, a scientist has warned.

Experts predict that the volcano of Cumbre Vieja on the island of La Palma could send a massive slab of rock twice the size of the Isle of Man crashing into the Atlantic Ocean.

The effect would be to generate a monster wave travelling faster than a jet aircraft and with the energy equivalent to the combined output of America's power stations working flat out for six months.

After travelling across 6430km of the Atlantic for about nine hours the tsunami would hit the Caribbean islands and the east coasts of Canada and the United States with devastating effect.

The wave would stretch for many kilometres and would sweep into the estuaries and harbours for up to 32km inland, destroying everything in its path.

Boston, New York, Washington, DC, and Miami would be virtually wiped off the map and tens of millions of people killed, said Professor Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Grieg Hazard Research Centre at University College London.

McGuire said that close monitoring might at best provide two weeks' warning of the disaster but that despite knowing about the danger for a decade, no one was keeping a proper watch on the mountain.

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

"What we need now is an integrated volcanic monitoring setup to give maximum warning of a coming eruption," McGuire said.

"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 every 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 pounds.

In comparison, the US was spending US$4 million ($6.1 million) a year scouring the skies for kilometre-sized asteroids which were much less of a threat, McGuire said.

The Cumbre Vieja volcano last erupted in 1949 and its western flank is highly unstable. It could split apart next time it erupts, which could be at any time in the next 1000 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, he said.

Yet it could be a false alarm. Several eruptions could come and go before one of them sent the mountainside crashing into the sea in a matter of minutes.

McGuire acknowledged that the decision to evacuate the eastern seaboard of the US would not be an easy one. "I don't honestly know how we handle that," he said. "As scientists all we should really do is advise people of what we think the risks are."

Trying to stop the mountain collapsing was out of the question, he said. He has calculated that it would take 35 million years to dig out the dangerous part of the volcano and move it away.

- INDEPENDENT