Earth ChangesS


Umbrella

Canadian Forces called in as raging floodwaters lay waste to parts of Southern Alberta


Ottawa Citizen
Thu, 20 Jun 2013 22:07 UTC
In B.C., flood watches have been issued for rivers and creeks in the province's west and east Kootenay region and smaller waterways in the upper and lower Columbia regions
Alberta flooding
© Jordan Verlage, The Canadian PressKevan Yaets swims after his cat Momo as the flood waters sweep him downstream and submerge his cab in High River, Alberta on June 20, 2013 after the Highwood River overflowed its banks. Hundreds of people have been evacuated with volunteers and emergency crews helping to aid stranded residents.
Torrential rains and widespread flooding throughout southern Alberta on Thursday washed out roads and bridges, sent residents scurrying for safety, and delivered up surreal scenes of cars, couches and refrigerators just floating away.

The RCMP put out a call for help to the Canadian Armed Forces, which sent in two helicopters and a Hercules aircraft to help extract people stranded by water.

Officials with the City of Calgary said as many as 100,000 people in low-lying neighbourhoods could be forced from their homes due to heavy flooding, an evacuation that would take place in stages over the next few days.

Bruce Burrell, director of the Calgary Emergency Management Agency, said water levels on the Bow River aren't expected to subside until Saturday afternoon.

"Depending on the extent of flooding we experience overnight, there may be areas of the city where people are not going to be able to get into until the weekend," he told a news conference.
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Cloud Precipitation

Indian landslides leave a hundred dead and thousands trapped in valley

Maseeh Rahman
The Guardian
Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00 UTC




Hindu pilgrims visiting shrines in Uttarakhand state are left stranded days after floods killed more than 100

As many as 4,000 people are believed trapped by landslides in a valley near a Hindu shrine in the Indian Himalayas, days after floods killed more than 100 people.

Helicopters have ferried rescue workers and doctors along with equipment, food and medicine to Kedarnath in the state of Uttarakhand, the nearest town. Most of those stranded are Hindu pilgrims who were visiting four shrines.

Amit Chandola, a state spokesman, said authorities had so far been unable to reach eight villages feared washed away by the weekend floods in the worst-hit districts of Rudraprayag and Chamoli.
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Bizarro Earth

Epidemic of sink-holes plagues Buffalo, NY

Ron Plants
WGRZ.com
Thu, 20 Jun 2013 16:37 UTC
Image
Sinhoke on Duerstein Street in Buffalo
We're hearing about more sinkholes developing on some streets in Buffalo and that could be much more of a problem for property owners. That is especially the case if the city determines it's caused by leaking or broken water pipes which undermine the street.

City Council Majority Leader Richard Fontana estimates the repairs could run up to three or four thousand dollars or more in repairs if the city makes the ruling that a property owner's pipes are leaking or broken. He says much of the problem is tied to the age of the pipes.

People on Duerstein Street off of Seneca Street in South Buffalo recently sent us pictures of a deep sinkhole which opened up this past weekend. The city feels the homeowner is responsible but in this case the city will make a repair according to City Spokesman Mike DeGeorge. It is in the middle of the street near the sewer line.

Comment: This excuse that all underground pipes in the U.S. suddenly became too old is growing a little 'old' itself. In fact an incredible number of sink-holes have been appearing world-wide. Take a look at these: Sinkholes - A Sign of the Times?

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Bizarro Earth

Sinkhole forces road closure in West View, Pennsylvania


WTAETV
Wed, 19 Jun 2013 00:00 UTC
A giant sink-hole forces West View road to shut down.

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Bizarro Earth

Cascadia fault line in North America: A now still and silent subduction zone where disaster awaits

Chris Carrington
The Activist Post
Wed, 19 Jun 2013 00:00 UTC
Image
On a dark winter's night in January 1700 a tsunami struck Japan. It flooded fields, swept away villages for miles inland and cost many lives. Even as far back as 1700 the Japanese had made the connection between earthquakes and Tsunami, but this time there was no earthquake, no warning to allow the people time to evacuate to higher ground. The tsunami was called the 'orphan tsunami' because it had no 'parent' earthquake. For more than 300 years the origin of the orphan tsunami remained a mystery.

In the 1980s Hiroo Kanamori and Tom Heaton published a paper that said the 1700 tsunami was caused by a massive rupture of the Cascadia fault line that runs off the west coast of the United States from California to Vancouver. In 1987 Brian Atwater studied soil samples far inland across the length of the fault and discovered that the United States had also suffered a tsunami at the same time as the Japanese. He concluded that Kanamori and Heaton were correct, a massive earthquake had sent a tsunami out from the source of the quake inundating the coasts on both sides of the Pacific.

Recent studies by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania has concurred on the findings of previous studies.
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House

Video: Ground crumbles and buildings collapse as apocalyptic floods sweep India


RT news
Thu, 20 Jun 2013 18:12 UTC
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Bizarro Earth

Moderate 5.7 magnitude earthquake shakes buildings in Chile's capital


The Extinction Protocol
Thu, 20 Jun 2013 08:38 UTC
Image
© USGS
A magnitude-5.7 earthquake shook central Chile on Wednesday, causing buildings to sway in the capital but apparently causing no major damage. The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake struck at 17:29 p.m. local time and its epicenter was about 60 kilometers (37 miles) east-north-east of Los Andes, Chile. Officials discarded the possibility of a tsunami and said there were no immediate reports of deaths or damages. Chile is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries. A magnitude-8.8 quake and the tsunami it unleashed in 2010 killed more than 500 people and destroyed 220,000 homes. - ABC
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Bizarro Earth

Singapore haze at worst yet, Malaysia schools shut


Yahoo! News
Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00 UTC
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© The Associated Press/Mark BakerA woman checks her mobile phone as she walks past Malaysia's landmark Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Thursday, June 20, 2013.
Singapore urged people to remain indoors amid unprecedented levels of air pollution Thursday as a smoky haze wrought by forest fires in neighboring Indonesia worsened dramatically. Nearby Malaysia closed 200 schools and banned open burning in some areas.

The Pollutant Standards Index, Singapore's main measure for air pollution, surged to a record reading of 371, breaching the "hazardous" classification that can aggravate respiratory ailments. The previous all-time high before this week was in 1997, when the index reached 226.

The hazardous reading lasted three hours before easing to 253 in the evening, still "very unhealthy."

Smog fueled by raging Indonesian blazes has hit Singapore and Malaysia many times, often in the middle of the year, but the severity of this week's conditions has strained diplomatic ties. Officials in Singapore say Jakarta must do more to halt fires on Sumatra island started by plantation owners and farmers to clear land cheaply.

"This is now the worst haze that Singapore has ever faced," Singapore's Environment Minister Vivian Balakrishnan wrote on his Facebook page. "No country or corporation has the right to pollute the air at the expense of Singaporeans' health and wellbeing."

The haze has shrouded the city-state's skyscrapers in a pall of noxious fumes and posed numerous inconveniences for Singaporeans, some of whom complained of coughs and covered their faces with handkerchiefs while walking outdoors.
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Bizarro Earth

Why is Africa ripping apart? Seismic scan may tell

Charles Q. Choi
OurAmazingPlanet
Wed, 19 Jun 2013 08:27 UTC
Great Rift Valley
© ESAThis radar image highlights portions of three of the lakes located in the Western Rift of the Great Rift Valley, a geological fault system of Southwest Asia and East Africa: Lake Edward (top), Lake Kivu (middle) and Lake Tanganyika (bottom).
Arrays of sensors stretching across more than 1,500 miles in Africa are now probing the giant crack in the Earth located there - a fissure linked with human evolution - to discover why and how continents get ripped apart.

Over the course of millions of years, Earth's continents break up as they are slowly torn apart by the planet's tectonic forces. All the ocean basins on the Earth started as continental rifts, such as the Rio Grande rift in North America and Asia's Baikal rift in Siberia.

The giant rift in Eastern Africa was born when Arabia and Africa began pulling away from each other about 26 million to 29 million years ago. Although this rift has grown less than 1 inch (2.54 centimeters) per year, the dramatic results include the formation and ongoing spread of the Red Sea, as well as the East African Rift Valley, the landscape that might have been home to the first humans.

"Yet, in spite of numerous geophysical and geological studies, we still do not know much about the processes that tear open continents and form continental rifts," said researcher Stephen Gao, a seismologist at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, Mo. This is partly because such research has mostly focused on mature segments of these chasms, as opposed to ones that are still in development, he explained.
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Cloud Precipitation

Floods close Lourdes pilgrimage site in Pyrenees

Bob Edme
boston.com
Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:37 UTC
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© AP Photo/Bob EdmeThe sanctuary of Lourdes flooded, in Lourdes, southwestern France, Tuesday, June 18, 2013. French rescue services and police are evacuating hundreds of pilgrims from hotels threatened by floodwaters from a rain-swollen river in the Roman Catholic shrine town of Lourdes.
Heavy floods in southwest France have left two dead and forced the closure of the Catholic pilgrimage site in Lourdes and the evacuation of pilgrims from nearby hotels.

Muddy floodwaters swirled Wednesday in the grotto where nearly 6 million believers from around the world, many gravely ill, come every year seeking miracles and healing. It has been a major pilgrimage site since a French girl's vision of the Virgin Mary there in 1858.

Heavy rains around the region inundated town centers and swelled the Gave de Pau river, forcing road closures.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls said on BFM television that a man in his seventies died Wednesday, swept away by the river. The Interior Ministry says it is the second person who has died in this week's rains.

The spokesman for the Lourdes pilgrimage complex, Mathias Terrier said that the site in the foothills of the Pyrenees wasn't likely to reopen before the end of the week.

Rescue services evacuated hundreds of people from nearby hotels. Authorities were particularly concerned with bringing weak and sick pilgrims to safety.
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