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I've been researching this for a few years. (The volcano not the terrorists).
IMHO - A couple of things everyone should be aware of. There have been two "slides" of monumental proportions in our lifetime,(actually 101 years).
One occured in 1958 in Lituya (or Letuya)Bay Alaska, when an earthquake caused a portion of a mountain side to slip into a fairly remote bay and speed out to sea. The immediate wave was over 1700 feet high and scoured the coastline of all vegetation and killed a few people fishing in the bay. That's over 5 1/2 football fields! And it moved down the bay and out into the ocean in less than 4 minutes.
The second was a rock slide that occurred at Turtle Mountain in Alberta Canada in April 1903. Now even though this was a rock slide and not a tsunami there are some things that we should all keep in mind. The Turtle Mountain slide took 100 seconds - during that two minutes 90 million tons of limestone plummeted down the mountain flank, across the nearly two mile wide valley floor, and climbed up the opposite slope to a height of 400 feet. It turned half of the mining town of Frank, Alberta into toothpicks and killed 70 people. All in under two minutes.
A mega-tsunami generated by the Cumbra Veija would take a little more than a day (8-9 hours)to hit the east coast of the U.S. with the first wave. (I don't know about you, but after seeing the traffic jams this year caused by Floridians fleeing hurricanes with 2 and 3 days notice - I'm not all that comfortable with our evacuation plans, or the way in which our citizenry respond to evac orders!) Boston would be first hit of the major east coast cities, then NYC, and then on down the coast. The tsunami would have spread out during it's Atlantic crossing and estimates are that the first pressure wave would ONLY be 50 meters high when it climbs the Atlantic shelf and sweeps ashore for a few miles. Say goodbye to the Caribbean Islands, the Florida Keys, Cuba, and the major coastal cities in South America. The east coast of the US would be scoured, just like Lituya Bay and Frank Canada.
As we have found out in California and Japan, saturated mountain terrain can let go with mudslides and land slides with terrifying and deadly effect. Tremors along fault lines, and certainly along already unstable volcanic faults could cause La Palma to become more unstable. Mother Nature has an unpleasant way of showing humans how costly our arrogance can be!
I would neither discount or scoff at any idea concerning terrorists using explosives at La Palma. There are so many porous Nuclear sites in the former Soviet Union, so many caches of poorly guarded or unguarded explosives around the world that it's not too far-fetched that terrorists might plot/plan/strategize such an attack. You might not always agree with the intellegence services but one thing they've said is absolutely true..."the terrorists only have to be right once - we have to be right every time." Does anyone want to face the consequences?
Now, couple a terrorist plot with Mother Nature's rainy season saturating the slopes of the Cumbra Veija....I don't want to think about the potential result. But I sure do hope the US and the Brits have some teams in place to keep an eye on things.
Don't ever get too cocky! To paraphrase the "Rule of 6 P's." Perfect - Preparation - Prevents - Piss - Poor - Performance.
And I hope I'm wrong.
BTW - Google "Lituya Bay tsunami" and "Cumbra Veija or La Palma" to see pictures and read other accounts.
Happy New Year!
Bigeasy