Dr Gerard Fryer is a researcher at the University of Hawaii and former senior scientist at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre or NOAA. He has warned of a catastrophic chain-reaction event that could strike the US islands in the event of a volcano. Dr Fryer revealed during Amazon Prime’s “Mega Disasters” that if the Mauna Loa volcano erupts, it would trigger a landslide into the Pacific Ocean.
This would, in turn, spark a tsunami, which would take as little as 30 minutes to reach the other Hawaiin islands.
He said in 2016: “It’s almost incomprehensible, the scale and the enormity of this.
“This could be a culture ending event.
“The state would essentially be knocked back into the stone age.”
Dr Fryer went on to detail how his prediction pans out.
He added: “Mauno Loa is the 800-pound gorilla here, its the one we have to worry about.
“As it prepares for an eruption, the southwest rift zone would inflate with magma, making the entire mountain swell, making the outer slopes steeper.
“There would be a succession of small earthquakes, and then a big earthquake, shaking loose the western flank.
“Then a big tsunami would head in Honolulu’s direction.”
Chillingly, Dr Fryer also revealed an event of this scale may not be too far away.
He continued: “These giant landslides, as far as we can tell, they seem to occur during periods of high sea level, when the climate is warm.
“Why that is, we do not know, but we are in a warm period right now with high sea level.
“So we can expect something like this within the next 10 to 20,000 years.”
Hawaii has already begun preparations for an event of this magnitude, as scientists closely monitor a network of global warning systems.