El Hierro Volcano - The Tsunami and the Conspiracy

 

If you were to have asked any resident of El Hierro about Volcanoes two or three weeks ago they would have maybe shrugged and contended that the threat of seismic activity was something that they had always had to live with.

As onlookers from around the world watched nervously as the state of alert on the westernmost of Canary Islands was raised to yellow two weeks ago, the residents countered that this was nothing new - similar alerts have been issued for strong winds and unusual tidal activity, even for landslides - just never for seismic activity.

But perhaps the one thing that is arousing most interest is the volcanic history of the Canary Islands, and the potential that this tiny group of islands has to devastate much of the Caribbean and the eastern seaboard of the USA.

Back in 2000 the BBC documentary series, Horizon, predicted what would happen if Volcanic or Seismic eruptions caused a landslide on one of the mountainous, steep-sided Canary Islands - specifically La Palma.

In the event of a landslide on the eastern side of the island, a mass upwards of 4'000'000 cubic meters could crash into the Atlantic and cause a Tsunami that would be as high as 300 ft, and could cross the ocean in just 6 hours.

Whilst many scientists dispute this theory, what they can agree on is that this is exactly what did happen some 50'000 years ago on El Hierro, when a massive landslide create what is now the Vall del Golfo bay on the north of the island, where the resulting Tsunami is thought to have been responsible for the creation of the Florida Everglades.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has been unusually quite about the situation in the Canary Islands, which has prompted in a number of conspiracy theories being floated around the net. The official line is that there is no direct threat to the USA and therefore nothing to report and no need to cause panic unnecessarily, however whispers are that in the event of such an occurrence very little could be be done anyway and that the Government is already secretly planning measure to react to such a disaster.

Conspiracy theorists in America may chose not to watch the Morgan Freeman file 'Deep Impact' in the near future.

Read further news stories about the El Hierro Volcano by clicking the link HERE .