You know what would be great? If the tsunami came in just as a bunch of Islamic terrorist were setting off an atomic bomb. That way, it wouldn’t be a complete loss.
Oh, and if you’re in Manhattan and you’re really worried, two words: Washington Heights. That should do it.
I’m not sure it would hit New York City in four hours. A study published by CNN in 2001 says a 150-foot wall of water would thrash the Caribbean and the Americas in about nine hours. More recent research claims the effect would be “Category 5 hurricanes along the entire Eastern Seaboard of the US” with a storm surge reaching up to 15 miles into the country’s interior.
A tsunami from this event would also cause broad devastation on the coasts of Western Europe and Africa, specifically Morocco. Here’s a little more from the article:
It’s a massive chunk, almost a third of the island, that stands to just shear off, leaving behind a land mass that looks somewhat like a “question mark.” The link has some interesting pictures from space, plus a little diagram of the Cumbre Vieja fissure.
You might want to take a look at a pictorial overview on the dissemination of the La Palma tsunami, also by the Benfield Greig Centre. Here, unlike in the CNN article, the Centre estimates that the waves will reach the American coast in six to eight hours. The same Centre has also published a fairly extensive survey here [Warning: slow PDF].
Those facts are a bit stuffy, so how about a slightly more breathless analysis? After all, what discussion of the mega-tsunami phenomenon would be complete without an appearance by our friends at the Discovery Channel? (For nostalgia’s sake, I felt compelled to include a link since it’s where I first learned of the impending doom… ;))
As for the OP’s evacuation question, the chances are very high that seismic warnings at La Palma might give you ample warning to flee the coast. The big issue, then, is twofold: will volcanic precursors on some tiny island receive any publicity, and if so, how will the public on our coasts react?
My understanding of tsunami’s is that they are more like a rising tide that just keeps rising than a huge breaking wave. Granted, there will be a wave front, but the major worry is drowning from unremitting flooding.
For an ordinary tsunami I’d take a chance on the 15th floor of the Empire State building.
What the OP is refers to, a megatsunami, is another matter. These have a huge breaking wave – over 100 meters tall. The megatsunami created when La Palma collapses will take over 6 hours to reach NYC (5500 km @ 900 km/hr). Providing for several hours of confusion, 3 or 4 solid hours of evacuation could be accomplished. Even if traffic were creeping along at 15 mph, that would put one about 50 miles inland.
I think it’s do-able, but not with an hours notice. If everyone was prepared, and the warnings were early, then very do-able. Empty NYC in 6 hours? I think that it’s technically possible. Even walking you’d be 20 miles away from the ocean.
BTW, some time ago (in another tsunami thread) I suggested that a Zorb might be a good way to survive a tsunami. I stand by that suggestion.
provide that:
It Floats
The Zorbonaut has constant access to air.
The Zorb doesn’t fill with water, drowning the Zorbonaut.
[hijack] I wonder if a Zorb would protect a Zorbonaut from Zombies? [/hijack]
We actually have plenty of bomb shelters in Manhattan. I wouldn’t trust 'em though…
And as for stealing a small boat, we don’t exactly have a plethora of marinas here. Heck, even getting down to wtare level on Manhattan is kinda tough.
My own personal plan is to grab my emegency kit, stuff it in my saddlebags, and my pregnant wirfe and I go for a nice ride up the bike trail beside the FDR to the Bronx…
That would probably be the best way to do it, actually. I think you’d be able to move more people to upper Manhattan or off of Manhattan if they were on foot than if you jammed up the roads and bridges with cars. You could use 1/2 to 3/4 of a bridge for pedestrians and bicycles, motorcycles, scooters, etc. and use the remaining lanes for emergency vehicles.
Other than that, buildings are mostly just empty space anyway, so there should be plenty of room aloft.
Well, maybe you wouldn’t have to go so far as 20 miles to properly evacuate. We’ve been talking a wall of water about 150 high. The New Jersey Palisades are about 500 feet high. As noted before, a megastunami would first have to cross Brooklyn, Staten Island and midtown before it would get as far as the George Washington Bridge. That would, I imagine, take up quite a bit of the water coming in, no?
The biggest danger would be the mad crush to get to New Jersey, no?
I was wondering, exactly how far inland could a tsunami travel? Five yards, five miles, what? I live in Alexandria, Virginia and I’d like to know if I would need to evacuate or if my condo will increase in value, now that I’ve got waterfront property . . . 
Okay, Ikeaboy, what’s your solution for when the New Madrid fault lets go as it’s scheduled to do “any day now”?
To add to what Eve said, there was no way to evacuate NYC on 9/11, and while no doubt the Homeland Security boys are busy studying the matter, I doubt they’ll come to a different conclusion than the Civil Defense folks did during the Cold War: There’s simply no way to evacuate a major city in a short period of time.
I was wondering about Washington, as well. I would think that a tsunami could cause severe flooding in the tidal Potomac. Dunno about a megatsunami…
See this punctuation mark that I used: “?”
It means something. You may wish to look it up.
Thanks for the answer to my question, but no thanks for the pointless snark.
I admit that I was somewhat upset when I posted yesterday (have a friend in the area I wasn’t able to reach). However, it was not intended as snark, unlike your wisecrack about my looking up the meaning of “?”.
IMHO, since you are a member of the SDSAB, and in the interests of fighting ignorance, etc. etc., you really ought to have taken 30 seconds to use Google and post a useful number rather than a guess. Or just not said anything at all.
[/end hijack]
I have been in Chicago on two occassions when the authorities decided to move massive amounts of people out of the Loop. The first was the Tunnel Flood of April 13, 1992 when hole was unintentionally punched through the bottom of the Chicago River into one of the many tunnels running under that area of the city. The second was September 11, 2001. Actually, in the latter instance folks sort of spontaneously decided they didn’t want to spend the day in skycrapers.
In both instances tens of thousands, if not a couple hundred thousand, were moved out of the Loop by utilizing the busses and trains used by communters every day. It took 2-3 hours, but huge numbers of people were moved out of the area. It did help that there was no panic - no one was in immediate danger, we didn’t have buildings falling over or burning, and so forth.
And huge numbers were left behind for one reason or another - tens of thousands live downtown, thousands of emergency personnel still needed to be there, there are a couple of massive hospitals in close proximity…
So, an evacuation could save thousands, even tens of thousands of people – but you can not completely evacuate a large city in a couple of hours.
I would suspect that in some instances “vertical evacuation” might work, or at least be an option with some chance of success. The buildings right along the shore would be a poor choice, but large, sturdy buildings behind the intial rows of buildings might be sheltered enough from the intial force of water coming inland to survive Certainly, if you couldn’t get far enough inland to avoid the incoming water you’d have nothing to lose by trying to escape upwards.
As has been said, most tsunamis are more like a constantly rising tide rather than a big breaker IF you are on the land side of the wave. The U.S. would be on the ocean side of the wave and it can build up much more height and speed as it heads across the Atlantic. If the wave front did reach the U.S. it would begin to break when it reached the Continental shelf. The areas most affected would be Long Island (which would be all but washed away as it is just a moraine) and the Long Island Sound would rise enough to engulf most of the surrounding areas. Southern Brooklyn and Queens would probably take some damage and the rising tide would probably affect the river levels of the Hudson and East Rivers, inundating parts of Manhattan.
If I were in Manhattan, I’d think that moving toward the center of the island and upstairs in some tall buildings would be enough to protect folks. The outlying buildings would blunt the force of any flood waters so that buildings away from the coast would be little affected.
It’s also been noted that the island in the Canaries that might collapse probably won’t do so all at once, so it’s the difference between throwing many pebbles into a bowl of water as opposed to throwing in a brick.
It wasn’t important to the point I was making, and it was late. I am sorry to hear about your friend, though. I do hope he or she is Ok.
Instead of sitting here and squirming, how about doing a controlled demolition of the threatening portion of said Canary Island volcano before there’s a problem?
IIRC, the idea has been discussed, however, it would basically take nuclear explosives to do anything useful, and we’re not sure enough that we could properly control the result. We could end up making things much worse than they would otherwise be.
I was in Chicago for both of these events as well (I was in the Loop both times) and indeed the area (Loop again) did empty out in good order. There were large backups at the trains and so forth as the mass transit system was not set in evening rush hour mode yet so clearing everyone out took some time but it all got sorted out with little trouble.
However, the key here I believe is the total lack of panic on the part of people leaving the city. The “flood” was weird because it was totally out-of-sight and certainly posed no imminent danger to people. For 9/11 people were shaken and worried but no one I am aware of felt death was near.
Contrast that with a killer megatsunami headed your way and you know you have three hours to scoot. How many people will calmly wait at the train station to clear out? Further, in both instances you cite, they just cleared out the Chicago Loop (main business district in Chicago) which, while holding a lot of people during the business day, is still only a small fraction of the city. In the event of such a natural disaster heading our way you’d have to clear out a great many more people than just those in the Loop.
As others have said and some studies indicate you simply cannot evacuate a major city on short notice. However, at least for the megatsunami, it would seem you don’t have to actually evacuate the whole city to some distant point but can probably get away with relocating the portion near the shore several miles inland and perhaps up some sturdy buildings. The further away the better of course but you do what you can and hope for the best.
You coded your zombie question incorrectly – it should be: [non sequitur] I wonder if a Zorb would protect a Zorbonaut from Zombies? [/non sequitur]
I think a Zorb would provide excellent zombie protection.
We still haven’t gotten a very satisfactory answer to this question.
If the geologist mentioned earlier in this thread said typical heights are 2-3 meters, and 10 m is tall but reasonable, then a normal tsunami shouldn’t have an effect too far inland. 100 mph, sure…but even a mile in, you shouldn’t see much, right?
Now a megatsunami…that may be a totally different story. A couple hundred-meter wall of water at 500 mph might cause problems well beyond the strip at your local beach resort. But even then, how far are we really talking?