Report of massive earthquake swarm in Canary Islands

     

 

July 23, 2011 – CANARY ISLANDS – 368 quakes recorded so far….but still some more to be analyzed…northern side of El Hierro suffering the swarm. -Twitpic  This is something we will continue to monitor closely. The Canary Islands are believed to have been formed from a magma plume. Attention turned to the islands after a mild seismic swarm occurred in 2004. The region is seismically active and a major  eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano could pose a potential tsuanami threat to the Eastern U.S. and the English Channel. A 2001 report in the UK Indendent warned: Most of the wave’s energy, equivalent to the combined output of America’s power stations for six months, would travel westwards to the American coast but enough would be flicked north towards the English Channel to cause catastrophic coastal damage. A computer model has been designed to show the way the tsunami will build after the volcano, called Cumbre Vieja, erupts on La Palma, at the western end of the Spanish island chain. It describes the almost unimaginable scale of an event that the scientists say could happen at any time within the foreseeable future. “We’re looking at an event that could be decades or a century away – but there will be a degree of warning beforehand,” said Simon Day, of the Benfield Greg Hazard Reseach Centre at University College London. Most of the rocky western flank of Cumbre Vieja is unstable enough to be dislodged in the next big eruption of the volcano, which is active enough to explode at least once or twice a century. Its last big event was in 1949. –Rense 

This is not meant to scare anyone. It’s to educate all about the potential dangers. There is absolutely no indication of this event being imminent. The present seismic swarm is taking place on El Hierro not La Palma.   (c) History Channel

contribution Luisport