February 15, 2005
by Gordon Thomas

London. The next mega-tsunami could kill over a million people. It will "very probably" sweep ashore at jet-fighter speed swamping the southern tip of the Gulf of Mexico, north to Miami, and on up to New York.

There it will topple Manhattan's skyscrapers in the way beach huts along the coasts of Thailand and elsewhere in the Indian Ocean were swept into oblivion over Christmas.

"It is not Œif' this will happen, but Œwhen'. Events are already being primed and nothing can stop them", said the world's leading volcanologist, Professor Bill McGuire.

He described the Indian Ocean tsunami as "the kind of wave a child makes in a paddling pool compared with what will come".

He made his prediction surrounded by the evidence of the massive destruction in twelve countries bordering the Indian Ocean.

"It is not a question of if it will happen in the Atlantic, but when. I can be as certain of that as I know night follows day", he reported in the calm, logical voice of a scientist.

His certainty is based on what is happening some 3,000 miles from the coastline of Mexico, where with its scores of resorts, fishing ports and the holiday homes of the rich and famous, the risk is at its greatest.

"Gone — all of them. They'll be swept aside", said Professor McGuire. The 50-year-old scientist heads a team of meteorologists and geologists in the cloistered calmness of University College London, England.

Collectively known as the specialists, there is no other group like them in the world.

Sponsored by Benfield, the world's third-largest reinsurance broker, McGuire and his fellow scientists spend their long working days predicting where the next volcanic eruption, tropical storm or earthquake will strike.

As the clamour of accusations grows over the failure to provide tsunami warning systems for the impoverished coastal communities that ring the Indian Ocean — and the absence of such a system for the Atlantic Ocean that adjoins the Gulf of Mexico — McGuire's team has focussed on the setting for another disaster that could leave the coastline of the Gulf as shattered and broken as the palm-tree beaches of Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Thailand.

The trigger for that disaster is on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands. Towering there is the volcano Cumbre Vieja. It rises almost two kilometres from the Atlantic seabed, a simmering giant whose rumbles are proof it is far from dormant.

"Cumbre Vieja usually erupts at intervals of twenty to two hundred years. But it has not done so since 1971. The next eruption could dislodge an unstable slab of rock twenty kilometres long. This will crash into the seabed creating a column of water to rise a mile into the air", said Professor McGuire.

The ensuing tsunami, travelling at 500 miles an hour, would sweep towards the Bay of Mexico and the eastern seaboard of the United States. It would hit the shores after ten hours.

"The mega tsunami would, as it reached land, have a probable height of 165 feet and the impact force of twenty hydrogen bombs", said McGuire.

In its wake it would have destroyed Cuba and all the other Caribbean islands.

Gathering force, its major impact would be reserved for the thousands of miles of coastline that stretch from the southern end of the Gulf of Mexico to New York and Boston.

"We are looking here at a death toll of probably in excess of one million people. The effect on the global economy would be devastating. Mexico would be plunged back into economic ruin. The rest of the world would be in no real position to help. My estimate is that the financial damage would be in the US $2.3 to US $2.7 trillion. It will be the worst financial crash in history", added McGuire.

Mexico, he fears, is highly vulnerable to the effects of global warming. "Mexico City already has a considerable pollution spin-off that is compounded by the overall global warming problem. That is already happening and cannot be reversed for thousands of years. Global warming will lead to the disruption of ocean currents, resulting from massive melting of the Poles. This will shut-off the warm water of the Gulf Stream as it travels north.

"The result would be that northern Europe would become 5 C colder. The winters would be bitterly cold, as chilly as the last so-called Ice Age in the 17th century".

This kind of detailed analysis has made McGuire a doom-monger in Washington and Europe's capitals.

He is irritated that the United States has yet to recognise the need for a mega tsunami warning system — similar to the one on the Pacific financed by Japan — has not been installed in the Atlantic.

The cost would be many millions of dollars, he acknowledged. "But think of the risk that Cumbre Vieja poses", he added.

In the worst case scenario, the volcano could send 500 cubic kilometres of rock crashing into the sea that would generate a mega tsunami as high as one hundred metres.

"Mexico, like every other country in the path of such a tsunami, is not at all prepared. The view of many governments is that a tsunami like the one that struck the Indian Ocean will still be rare. Rare or not, they do occur. The great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 killed thousands.

"Mexico cannot afford to finance an Atlantic tsunami warning system. That should be done as an international venture, led by the United States (who have the most to lose economically) and the European Union", said McGuire.

"There is also an urgent need to improve the monitoring facilities of the flank of the Cumbre Vieja. Lack of funds put a virtual end to such monitoring in the late 1990s", he confirmed.

In an exclusive interview, he spelled out the current situation.

What is the monitoring position taken after the Indian Ocean disaster? "Three seismometers on the island will be able to detect the small swarms of earthquakes that will preceded the next eruption. Observed displacements indicate the continued, but very slow, westward movement of the landslide."

How big will the mega tsunami be when it strikes? "The worst case scenario (for a 550 cubic km collapse) envisages an initial bulge of water 900m high. This subsides to form waves in excess of 100m in height that strike neighbouring islands. After an hour, waves 50-100m high hit the NW African coast, while Spain and the UK experience waves 7-10m high two to five hours after collapse. After nine hours, the Florida coastline can expect to face around a dozen waves between 20 and 25m high. So can the Gulf of Mexico. But possibly higher."

When will the collapse of Cumbre Vieja happen? "No one knows. But it is almost certain to occur during a future eruption when pressure exerted by new magma and by heated ground water, accompanied by earthquakes caused by the rising magma, will provide optimum conditions for destabilising the landslide."

Will the whole landslide collapse as one? "This remains a matter for debate. Evidence from observations of other collapsing volcanoes suggests, however, that it will move largely as a coherent mass."

Will the Cumbre Vieja landslide collapse quickly or slowly? "Previous studies and observations suggest that steep-sided volcanoes tend to collapse rapidly. The Cumbre Vieja west flank could collapse in just a couple of minutes.

Such a monumental volcano disaster was seen when Toba in Indonesia (not far from the epicentre of the Indian Ocean earthquake) erupted 75,000 years ago. It threw up a pall that covered the Mexican jungles with dust and plunged many parts of the world into a six-year winter of gloom.

"Round about that time, there was a population crash that reduced the global population to a few thousand. As a race we may have been very close to extinction", said Professor McGuire.

The geological record suggests that such cataclysmic eruptions happen every 100,000 years.

"So, taking Toba as a yard stick, we are coming closer to another major eruption. But trying to predict which volcano poses the greatest threat after Cumbre Vieja is very hard. There are some 3,000 active volcanoes. Only 150 of them are being fully monitored. But the longer a volcano has been dormant, the more violent the next eruption will be," said Professor McGuire.

He has seen the effect of a major disaster at close hand. He was a senior volcanologist on the island of Montserrat when its volcano suddenly erupted in 1996.

"Magma had been oozing out for almost a year. When the first big explosion happened at midnight, I was about six kilometres from it. That was quite terrifying. Think what it would be like to face a mega tsunami as it sweeps towards you".

He says there is also "a possibility" of a volcanic eruption in the southern Andes. "It could be one of those we have never heard about until now".

But he is confident of one eruption: the Teid volcano on the Canary Island of Tenerife will erupt in the second half of this year — "but not disastrously".

Could that eruption trigger nearby Cumbre Vieja?

He left the question unanswered and returned to his next book. It is called "Surviving Armageddon: Solutions for a Threatened Planet". It is a companion volume to his bestseller: "Guide to the End of the World: Everything You Never Wanted to Know".

There is another bestseller that already has used Cumbre Vieja as a theme for a thriller. Novelist Patrick Robinson's "Scimitar SL.2" has a gang of terrorists detonating the volcano to create a tsunami that destroys New York.

But Bill McGuire's real-life prediction of what would actually happen is far more frightening than any novelist would dare create.

Source: Newsletter