Earth ChangesS


Phoenix

US: Colorado fire forced residents to make mad dash

wildfire Boulder
© AP Photo/Peter M. FredinKurt Rieder, in white hat, with his 9 year old daughter Lily watch the smoke plume from a wildland fire burning in the Four Mile Canyon area just west of Boulder Colo. on Monday, Sept. 6, 2010. High winds pushed the smoke and ash eastward over the Colorado plains.
Boulder - David Myers knew it was time to leave when he looked out into the forest and spotted bright red flames towering skyward. Then came a blinding cloud of smoke and a deafening roar as the fire ripped through the wilderness.

"You can hear just this consumption of fuel, just crackling and burning. And the hardest thing is ... you couldn't see it because at the point the smoke was that thick," he said.

Myers was among about 3,500 people who desperately fled the fire after it erupted in a tinder-dry canyon northwest of Boulder on Monday and swallowed up dozens of homes. Residents packed everything they could into their cars and sped down narrow, winding roads to safety, encountering a vicious firestorm that melted the bumper of one couple's van.

Bizarro Earth

Floods leave tens of thousands homeless in Mexico

People use a make-shift boat
© AP Photo/America RocioPeople use a make-shift boat to cross a flooded avenue in Villahermosa in Mexico's Tabasco state, Tuesday Sept. 7, 2010. Weeks of torrential rains have unleashed flooding in huge swaths of southern Mexico, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes. )
Villahermosa - Weeks of torrential rains have unleashed flooding in huge swaths of southern Mexico, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes.

Tens of thousands more are sleeping on their roofs, refusing to abandon their possessions even as the rivers around them rise rapidly.

Authorities on Tuesday started releasing 2,000 cubic meters (71,000 cubic feet) of water per second from four damns in the region that have reached capacity. That caused several rivers to overflow.

Bizarro Earth

Planchon Volcano Starts Spewing Rocks, Gases, Chile's Geology Service Says

The Planchon volcano, on the border between Argentina and Chile, started erupting in the last few days, spewing pyroclastic material and gases, Chile's National Geology and Mining Service said.

The plume yesterday reached as high as 1.2 kilometer (0.75 mile) above the crater, the geology service said on its website today. The volcano, 196 kilometers south of Santiago, has had a permanent plume of smoke for several years.

The geology service described the eruption as "minor." Geologists plan to fly over the area today. An erupting volcano in 2008 forced residents to abandon the Chilean town of Chaiten.

To contact the reporter responsible on this story: Sebastian Boyd in Santiago at sboyd9@bloomberg.net

Bizarro Earth

Fiji - Earthquake Magnitude 6.3

Fiji Quake_070910
© USGSEarthquake Location
Date-Time:
Tuesday, September 07, 2010 at 16:13:32 UTC

Wednesday, September 08, 2010 at 04:13:32 AM at epicenter

Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location:
15.869°S, 179.261°W

Depth:
10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program

Region:
FIJI REGION

Distances:
155 km (100 miles) ENE of Lambasa, Vanua Levu, Fiji

210 km (130 miles) SW of Sigave, Ile Futuna, Wallis and Futuna

350 km (220 miles) NE of SUVA, Viti Levu, Fiji

2400 km (1490 miles) NNE of Auckland, New Zealand

Attention

South Africa: Rising Tide of Acid Mine Water Threatens Johannesburg

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© AlamyParticularly at risk is the central business district which is built over the central basin and is home to some of Africa's biggest firms
A toxic tide of acid mine water is rising steadily beneath Johannesburg which, if left unchecked, could cause earth tremors, power blackouts and even cancer among residents, experts have warned.

The water is currently around 600 metres below the city's surface but is rising at a rate of between 0.4 and 0.9 metres per day, meaning it could overflow onto the streets in just under a year and a half.

Because it would take 13 months to build a pumping station to clear the water, a legacy of 120 years of mining around Johannesburg, the state has just four months to find the millions of pounds needed to fund it.

It is currently locked in negotiations with multinational mining firms who have profited from the area's rich natural resources over who should pay and how much.

Announcing a task force of experts set up to deal with the issue yesterday, Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica said she was hoping that the potential dividends from tapping a new water supply for human consumption and use in industry would entice investors.

Bizarro Earth

New landslip buries 100 rescue workers in Guatemala

A massive landslide buried up to 100 people who were trying to dig out a bus caught in deep mud, killing at least 22 people with dozens more feared dead, as torrential rains battered Guatemala.

Emergency workers recovered 22 bodies from the landslide on a major highway northwest of the capital, and they warned it could take two days to dig out all the victims.

Bizarro Earth

Tropical Storm Hermine Threatens Mexico, Texas

Image
© National Hurricane Center/ReutersTropical storm Hermine is seen in this satellite image courtesy of the National Hurricane Center.
Tropical storm Hermine has formed in the Gulf of Mexico and warnings have been issued from Tampico, Mexico to the Baffin Bay on the south Texas coast, the National Hurricane Center said on Monday.

Hermine, the eighth tropical storm of the season, carried maximum sustained winds of 40 mph was located about 190 miles east-southeast of Tampico, Mexico. it was moving north at 8 mph.

U.S. forecasters said it was expected to turn toward the northwest and increase in speed on Monday.

"The center of Hermine is expected to approach the coast of northeastern Mexico or extreme southern Texas in the warning area early Tuesday morning," the Miami-based hurricane center said.

Bizarro Earth

New Zealand: Canterbury Fault Had Not Ruptured For At Least 16,000 Years

Wellington, NZPA - The fault that ruptured and produced the magnitude 7.1 earthquake in Canterbury on Saturday appears not to have ruptured for at least 16,000 years, scientists said today.

The earthquake produced a 22km-long surface rupture and up to 4m of horizontal displacement in alluvial terraces that were deposited about 16,000 years ago at the end of the last glaciation.

When the last ice-age ended, rivers brought large amounts of gravel from the high country and distributed it throughout Canterbury, many metres thick in some places.

"Before Saturday, there was nothing in the landscape that would have suggested there was an active fault beneath the Darfield and Rolleston areas," manager of the Natural Hazards Platform at GNS Science Kelvin Berryman said.

Geologists had no information on when the fault last ruptured as it was unknown until last weekend.

"All we can say at this stage is that this newly revealed fault has not ruptured since the gravels were deposited about 16,000 years ago."

Dr Berryman said it was highly likely there were other "hidden" faults around New Zealand which might be capable of producing large earthquakes in the future.

The fault had been accumulating stress for thousands of years and failed catastrophically when the stresses exceeded a certain threshold.

Better Earth

Giant Iceberg Enters Nares Strait

Image
© ESA
ESA's Envisat satellite has been tracking the progression of the giant iceberg that calved from Greenland's Petermann glacier on 4 August 2010.

This animation shows that the iceberg, the largest in the northern hemisphere, is now entering Nares Strait - a stretch of water that connects the Lincoln Sea and Arctic Ocean with Baffin Bay.

The Petermann glacier in northern Greenland is one of the largest of the country's glaciers - and until August it had a 70 km tongue of floating ice extending out into the sea.

The glacier regularly advances towards the sea at about 1 km per year. Earlier this year, satellite images revealed that several cracks had appeared. Envisat radar images showed that the ice tongue was still intact on 3 August but, on 4 August, a huge chunk had detached.

Calvings from the Petermann glacier are quite common, but one of this magnitude is rare. Less significant events took place in 2001, in 2008 when a 27 sq km iceberg made its way south to Davis Strait, and in 2009.

Bizarro Earth

Guatemala mudslides kill at least 38; 2 buses hit

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© Associated PressPeople stand in front of a bus partially covered by a landslide, due to heavy rains, on the Pan-American highway at Tecpan, Guatemala, Saturday Sept. 4, 2010.
Nahuala - Torrential rains from a tropical depression caused landslides that have killed at least 38 people in Guatemala - some of them rescuers trying to save people already buried under a wall of mud.

In the village of Nahuala, about 200 rescue workers searched through mud and rocks for bodies Sunday after two slides in the same spot killed at least 20 along a highway leading northwest of the capital toward Mexico. Another slide closer to Guatemala City killed at least 12.

Suagustino Pascual Tuy, a Nahuala police officer, said he and several others rushed to the highway with picks and shovels after hearing radio reports of the fallen earth, which had buried two pickup trucks and a bus at kilometer 171 of the Inter-American highway.

Pascual Tuy said the crowds were able to rescue several people alive including his nephew, who was driving one of the pickups.

"He is in critical condition, but thank God we were able to get him out alive," he said.

Pascual Tuy said people were still digging through the rubble when the mountain above them began crackling. He shouted a warning, but moments later the second slide buried a number of rescuers. Pascual Tuy ran for his life and the slide only caught his legs.