Millions in U.S. Face Mega-Wave from Island Collapse

Mon Aug 9, 9:33 AM ET

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&e=7&u=/nm/20040809/sc_nm/science_volcano_dc

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) - The bad news is tens of millions of people along the eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada may drown if the slow slippage of a volcano off north Africa becomes a cataclysmic collapse.

(snip)

Scientist Bill McGuire told a news conference on natural disasters on Monday that some time in the next few thousand years the western flank of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Canary Island of La Palma will collapse, sending walls of water 100 meters high racing across the Atlantic.

A chunk of the volcano the size of a small island began to slide into the ocean in 1949. There is almost no monitoring of the volcano, giving virtually no chance of any advance warning of another eruption which could trigger the catastrophe.

"The U.S. government must be aware of the threat. I am sure they are not taking it seriously," (emphasis, mine) McGuire of the Benfield Grieg Hazard Research Center told reporters. "They certainly should be worried, as should the island states of the Caribbean."

Has anybody heard anything about this before? Sounds like "The Day After Tomorrow" might not be so far-fetched after all.

The Discovery Channel did a show about it a few years ago. Theres no real telling when this thing is gonna go, but we know it will, so its not a matter of "if, but "when". Considering I live about 7 miles west of the Atlantic, well, I'm fucked if it goes...

I think we would have a little bit of a warning, but everyone trying to get off the island at the same time would be a nightmare!

my ass. humans are stupid as they always have been. it's not as it we don't have video to cover this.
but i don't care as i am in the mid-west. but it does occur, major economic disruption.

What the hell are you, some wacko tree-hugger Commie liberal?!?! :evilgrin:

We are not going to be able to evacuate the entire eastern coast seaboard in a few hours. So I don't see the point of monitoring something that can't be acted on, just so a few rich friends of politicians can know in advance and THEIR families be saved at taxpayer expense. I think we might as well work on the things we can change -- I know of no technique for stopping a volcano from going off when it wants to.

I'd be killed if the fucking thing went off, and millions of others as well. You would only need to move about 20-30 miles inland to escape death, so lets have a couple of satellites monitor it on the routine passes shall we?

Millions of people, all trying to move inland at once, would absolutely JAM the freeways into an immovable mess. "Only" 20-30 miles inland on foot would be impossible in the time it would take the tidal wave to reach landfall.

Not where I live.

There's still a few thousand years left and This Guy

Jim Bob Moffett, CEO
Freeport McMoRan
1615 Poydras St.
New Orleans, LA 70112
PHONE: 504-582-4000
FAX: 504-582-4028

Can dismantle mountains in No Time Flat.

For example, in the operation shown in the picture below, the Previously Tallest mountain in the area is already well Under Dismantlement:



http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/motherlode/freeport/freeport1.html

Mr. Moffett by all accounts is eager to dismantle more mountains, so why don't we all give him a call or fax (note that the numbers are from a public website) and see if he'll help out here?

It seems that U.S. Americans like to live by the coast. But I think one big wave hitting an expensive highly developed area is going to change that.

We don't seem to care if people in "underdeveloped" countries get smacked around by great walls of water or mud, but knock down a few buildings in New York, and all hell breaks loose.

Hence, another benefit to this scheme - New Scientific Knowledge!

Last summer I was on a research vessel with geophysicists from Cal Tech.

They were doing some seismic work off Oahu and showed me the bathymetry map of the islands they were developing.

Some of these slumping events were HUGE and these processes are ongoing (parts of the Big Island are cracking off).

Like catastrophic volcanic eruptions, the threat of these (rare) events is real, but there is not much we can do to prevent them or limit the consequences...

No that's not a typographical error - a wave over 1,700 feet in height from a massive landslide.

"The rockslide occurred along the eastern wall of the Gilbert Inlet (see figure above). The mass of rock striking the surface of the bay created a giant splash, which sent water surging to a height of 1720 feet (see figure above) across the point opposite the inlet. This initial sheet of water stripped all vegetation from the point, leaving a bare rock face, which shows up nicely on the map above, and in two of the photos below. The in addition to this initial splash, the rock slide also sent a giant local tsunami sweeping across the bay. Eyewitness accounts from the few unfortunate boaters who happened to be anchored in the bay for night, state that the wave was at least 100 feet tall at its maximum height near the head of the bay. Two of these boaters were killed by the wave while making a run for open water, the rest, amazingly, survived."

EDIT



Now THAT'S a disaster!

Was that that wave was more than 100 feet high at its maximum height (but apparently less than 200 feet, or they would have said 200 feet, right?).

The 1,728 height was how far this 100+ foot-high wave traveled up the side of the hill on the other side of The Bay.

Vaporize it with some big, big nukes.