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ARCHIVED - Malaga named as the area with the highest risk of tsunamis in Andalucia
Experts have found that a tsunami generated in the Alboran fault could cause a wave of more than five metres to reach the coast of Andalucia in 20 minutes.
In its State Plan for Civil Protection against Tsunami Risk published in the BOE this week (Plan Estatal de Protección Civil ante el Riesgo de Maremotos), the Spanish government has established that Malaga is the area of Andalucia most at risk of being hit by a tsunami.
The document has looked into factors causing tidal waves to work out the risk of a tsunami across Spain’s coasts, as well as the maximum height of the waves and how quickly they would reach the shore.
Experts found that on the Mediterranean coast of Andalucia the Alboran fault in the Alboran Sea is most likely to cause the largest tsunamis, with tidal waves more than five metres high able to reach the coasts of Malaga and the Spanish city of Melilla in North Africa in around 20 minutes.
Larger waves reaching more than eight metres high could also hit Andalucia’s western coasts in 55 minutes as well as the Canary Islands in around an hour generated by the Marques de Pombal and the Horseshoe faults.
The report found that the Spanish areas with the lowest risk of tsunamis were Cantabria and Galicia.
The findings now form part of a tsunami warning system to warn the Civil Protection authorities and emergency public services of the likelihood of a tidal wave so they can put in place measures to provide a rapid response should a tsunami hit Spain.
