There is a ticking time bomb on when Britain’s coasts will be destroyed by a devastating tsunami, a top scientist has warned.
Dr Simon Day explained that an increasingly unstable volcano in the Canary Islands has the potential to cause a massive landslide, sending the huge wave speeding hundreds of miles across the Atlantic Ocean.
The natural disaster expert at the University College London is urging Theresa May to prepare for the inevitably disaster headed our way.
It is the Cumbre Vieja volcano that is becoming more fragile by the day, making an eruption which could send a chunk of land the size of the Isle of Man crashing into the sea, more likely, the Express reports.
Dr Day said:
It could be several metres high, it depends where you are and how much energy the wave has.
It is hard to predict how big it would be as the wave would need to bend around to reach the UK.
It is Ireland and the south-west of England that are the most vulnerable to this kind of disaster, and already fell victim to tsunami devastation around 250 years ago.
Europe is not immune to tsunami devastation, in 1755 almost 100,000 people were killed in the Lisbon Earthquake, and a three metre high tsunami was sent to the UK and Ireland.
Dr Day said:
The 1755 Lisbon incident was not dissimilar. If a tsunami of two or three metres hit the south-west of England or Ireland [in the modern era], you have a lot of tourists on beaches.
There was a series of objections. But independent modelling has shown the same things as me.
My response is it’s better to know so we can prepare!
Coastal towns like Portsmouth and Southampton would be submerged, as well as Limerick in Ireland which would also suffer devastation and loss of life.
It is difficult to know when this tsunami will hit, but website TsunamiWatch explains ‘It may be 20, 40, 60, 80 years ahead – but on the other hand it could be next week’.
Better safe than sorry!
