What the papers say On being washed away The most spectacular piece of news - theoretical news, that is - of this reporting period is that Britain is at risk from a tsunami generated by a catastrophic volcanic eruption in the Canary Islands. Actually, the headline to Mark Henderson's article in The Times (29 August 2001) refers to the threat from a 'tidal wave', despite repeated statements in the press and elsewhere that tsunamis are not 'tidal waves' (depressing isn't it?). But back to the story: if the 'predicted' eruption occurs on La Palma, south-west England could be hit by 12-m-high waves that would 'travel a mile inland and obliterate almost everything in their path'. In fact, that's the least of it; the USA, the Caribbean and Brazil would receive waves of up to 50 m which would travel 10 km inland, 'virtually wiping out cities such as New York and Miami'. And who says so? Simon Day of the Benfield Greig Hazard Research Centre at University College London and Steven Ward of the University of California, who see Cumbre Vieja volcano as the culprit - a volcano that is likely to break apart explosively sometime during the next few centuries. Such an event would be three times bigger than the most serious tsunami to strike Europe in history, namely, that generated by the Lisbon earthquake of 1775, which killed 30 000 people. As a leader in the same issue of The Times puts it: 'Human history is no more than a skin of dust upon eternal stone. It can be sloshed away in one sweep by the waters that surround it. With a shrug of its shoulders, the earth eradicates a culture. With the heave of a stomach, oceans engulf civilizations whole.But there are real threats A few days after the above story appeared, David A. Falvey, the Executive Director of the BGS, wrote to The Times (4 September 2001) to complain that the attention being given to potentially huge, rare, not-within-our-lifetime events (Canary-originated tsunamis, asteroid impacts, and the like) was a distraction from lesser, but still serious, hazards that might more repay study. Most parts of the world in which they occur are still 'significantly unprepared' for large earthquakes, for example. And 'Although the United Kingdom is relatively unaffected by such hazards, we face a small but well-monitored earthquake hazard capable of damaging buildings and other installations. More importantly, land movements in Britain, caused by shrinking clay, collapsed mineworkings and landslip, cause significant damage (estimated at over 400 million pounds per year in insurance claims alone for housing subsidence) and occasional deaths ... Given the magnitude of the impacts of natural geohazards around the world, more priority should be given to improved monitoring of areas at risk, strategies to mitigate the effects of disasters and emergency planning. A globally coordinated approach to these issues could save the developed world some of the billions of dollars it contributes every year to disaster relief... If Britain were to take the lead in such a programme some emergency aid funds could be redirected to disaster mitigation and there could be benefits for British industry and financial institutions.' Quite so.
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