1949

1949 is the historical hinge in the book’s warning about Cumbre Vieja: an eruption opened a fault in the volcano and moved part of the ridge four metres toward the ocean. The event gives later concern about La Palma’s western flank a specific geological history, while leaving the scale of any future collapse uncertain.

The 1949 Eruption

The eruption came from a crater near the summit of the San Juan volcano and opened a fault that runs for kilometres along the western flank of the island. The fracture was difficult to see with the naked eye. At the time, a section of the Cumbre Vieja ridge slipped four metres downwards into the ocean, recording movement in the very slope that later becomes the focus of scientific concern.

From Historical Precedent to Warning

Stanley Frost says he has monitored the area for several years. His concern is not simply that the 1949 eruption happened, but that it may have left the rock at the heart of La Palma fissured. He describes the western flank as already destabilised, with the eastern and southern flanks pressing against it. In his assessment, an eruption could send hot magma into the volcanic vent, causing groundwater trapped in the rock to expand and evaporate rapidly. The resulting pressure could blast the western flank into the ocean, releasing an estimated five hundred cubic kilometres of rock.

The projected collapse is a possibility, not an event that the 1949 date itself confirms. A representative of van Maarten cites the Canary Islands authorities’ view that the theory is dubious. The disagreement makes the earlier eruption significant in two ways: it is a documented instance of movement on the ridge, and a precedent whose meaning for a future disaster remains contested.

A Date in the Book’s Disaster Chronology

The book also depicts a separate chain of catastrophe on the Norwegian continental slope. There, worms and bacteria transform methane hydrates; gas release contributes to seabed collapse and a landslide that generates a tsunami. The 1949 eruption on La Palma is not presented as the cause of that crisis. Rather, the two episodes place different forms of geological instability within the novel’s wider landscape of accumulating hazards: one begins with a recorded volcanic fault, the other with destabilised hydrates and a cascading submarine slide.