Don in Hollister wrote:Hi Socalshaken. Something to keep in mind is the Horizon program sole purpose is to make money and hype sells.
The worlds scientific experts have shown the "research" by Ward/Day/McGuire to be incorrect, unproven and wildly exaggerated in the Horizon program and subsequent interviews. It is not based on scientific facts.
The island is stable. Only a substantial increase in height could cause it to become unstable and at the current rate of growth that would take at least 10,000 years.
The current quake activity in the area is not occurring at La Palma, but at another island some distance from it.
Any place on the coast is at risk of tsunamis, and the East Coast is no exception. In 1929, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake in Newfoundland triggered a large underwater slump that ruptured the new transatlantic cable in 12 places. The slump also produced a tsunami that was recorded along the eastern seaboard as far south as South Carolina and across the Atlantic Ocean in Portugal. In Newfoundland, the tsunami reached heights of over 20 feet and claimed 29 lives. Take Care...Don
From Wikipedia:
In a BBC Horizon program broadcast on October 12, 2000, two geologists (Day and McGuire) cited this rift as proof that half of the Cumbre Vieja had slipped towards the Atlantic Ocean (Day et al., 1999; Ward and Day, 2001). They suggested that this process was driven by the pressure caused by the rising magma heating water trapped within the structure of the island. They hypothesised that during a future eruption, the western flank of the Cumbre Vieja, with a mass of approximately 1.5 x1015 kg, could slide into the ocean. This could then potentially generate a giant wave which they termed a "megatsunami" around 650-900 m high in the region of the islands. The wave would radiate out across the Atlantic and inundate the eastern seaboard of North America including the American, the Caribbean and northern coasts of South America some six to eight hours later. They estimate that the tsunami will have waves possibly 1,000 ft (305 m) or more high causing massive devastation along the coastlines. Modeling suggests that the tsunami could inundate up to 25 km (16 mi) inland - depending upon topography. The basis for Ward and Day (1999) modeling the collapse of a much larger portion of the western flank than the currently visible surface fissures suggest is unstable was evidence from geological mapping by Day et al. 1999. In this paper they argue that a large part of the western flank has been constructed in the scar of a previous collapse and therefore sits upon unstable debris.
The claim was also explored in a BBC docu-drama called End Day which went through several hypothetical scenarios of disastrous proportions.
However, the Tsunami Society (Pararas-Carayannis, 2002), published a statement stating "... We would like to halt the scaremongering from these unfounded reports ..." The major points raised in this report include:
* The claim that half of Cumbre Vieja dropped 4 m (13 ft) during the 1949 eruption is erroneous, and contradicted by physical evidence.
* No evidence was sought or shown that there is a fault line separating a "block" of La Palma from the other half.
* Physical evidence shows a 4 km (2 mi) long line in the rock, but the models assumed a 25 km (16 mi) line, for which no physical evidence was given. Further, there is no evidence shown that the 4 km (2 mi) long line extends beyond the surface.
* There has never been an Atlantic megatsunami in recorded history.
Other workers also disagree with the hypothesis of Day et al.; (1999) and Ward and Day (2001). In fact no scientists have expressed support for their speculations.
In September 2006 a team of research scientists at the highly regarded Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands published the findings of their research into the La Palma Tsunami phenomenon. Their research was highly critical of the 'Day' theory. They built several models similar to that of Day et al., but even with parameters exceeding the realms of reasonable possibility they were unable to create a tsunami. Even with their most unrealistic 'worst case scenario' they only managed to predict a wave of between 15 and 100 cm (39 in).
There is however, a consensus by geologists and volcanologists that edifice failure (large-scale collapses or mass wasting) of volcanic islands does occur and that large tsunamis have occurred in the Atlantic in the geological past. Despite this there is still no evidence reliably proving a cause and effect. All the documented large scale tsunamis in the Atlantic have been verifiably attributed to underwater earthquakes and not island collapses.[citation needed] Evidence of Tsunami deposits has been reported from the Caribbean and the Canary Islands. Since the 1990s the area has been (and continues to be), monitored and no movement has been detected.[citation needed] Ongoing and recent (2008) monitoring shows that the dimensions accord with those recorded in 1949. Thereby indicating that the block has not moved since 1949[citation needed]. Controversial evidence on the island of Bermuda is said to be tsunamite deposited by a tsunami that was generated by edifice failure on the adjacent island of El Hierro.
The actual distances involved in the 1949 rift are as follows: horizontal ~1 metre, vertical ~2 metres. Volume involved of the whole of the Cumbre Vieja is ~5 x 1011 m3 with an estimated mass of 1.5 x 1015 kg.
http://www.lapalma-tsunami.com/http://www.physorg.com/news77977989.htmlhttp://www.ign.es/ign/es/IGN/Sismologia10Espana.jsphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Palma[url][/url] 
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