This BBC documentary examines the possibility of a La Palma mega tsunami caused by a volcanic eruption and landslide into the sea. A La Palma tsunami could be more devastating than the recent Boxing Day and Pacific Ocean tsunamis that devastated the Indian Ocean and east coast of Japan.
On 12 October 2000, a BBC Horizon program followed two geologists, Simon Day and Bill McGuire, and presented their investigation of a fault line running the length of La Palma. These geologists proposed that the entire west flank of La Palma's Cumbre Vieja had moved a few metres towards the sea. This process is driven by rising pressures caused by magma heating water trapped within the structure of the island. They hypothesised that during a future eruption, the entire western flank of the Cumbre Vieja could collapse into the Atlantic Ocean. This would generate a gigantic wave, which they termed a Mega Tsunami, almost 900 m (2,950 ft) high in the region of the Canary Islands. The wave would then radiate out across the Atlantic Ocean inundating much of the eastern seaboard of North America, the Caribbean and northern coasts of South America between six and eight hours later. They estimated that a La Palma tsunami could have waves possibly 50 m (164 ft) or higher at landfall causing massive devastation along the coastline. Modelling suggests that the tsunami could inundate up to 25 km (16 miles) inland depending upon topography. In their 2001 paper, Day and McGuire argued that a large part of the Cumbre Vieja's western flank had formed in the scar of a previous collapse and therefore sat upon unstable debris.
This claim was further explored in a BBC documentary called End Day which presented several hypothetical scenarios of disastrous proportions.
An underwater eruption in September 2011 south of the island of El Hierro gave rise to further speculation regarding the possibility of a La Palma tsunami. El Hierro lies about 100 km south of La Palma and over 100 km southwest of Tenerife. On 7–8 October 2017, a series of minor tremors sparked panic on the Canary Islands, bringing up the topic once again with further speculation regarding the possible effects of an eruption and landslide into the sea.
This is a 30-minute edit of the original 60-minute 2010 BBC Horizon documentary, Could We Survive A Mega Tsunami
La Palma Tsunami
La Palma Mega Tsunami Documentary | BBC Mega Tsunami Documentary HD
Tsunami | National Geographic: [ Ссылка ]
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