Experts: Beware - landslide season is coming soon

By Ray Lane
SEATTLE - The weather may be dry this weekend, but windier, wetter, colder winter weather is a certainty in the coming weeks - courtesy of the La Niña weather pattern this year.

With all of that comes the threat of landslides in the months ahead. And emergency management officials were on hand Saturday in West Seattle to tell homeowners how to avoid disaster in case the earth really does move.

At the root of the problem is the hilly geography of the Puget Sound region - with Seattle being the second-hilliest city in the nation behind San Francisco.

It's a big reason so many of us enjoy living here - our hills can offer some spectacular views.

But if they're not treated with care, the experts say that sliding ground can easily put your home in jeopardy, especially when the weather gets wet and wild.

Landslide season by now is well under way, with most of them typically occuring next month - after months of water has soaked into the ground.

In West Seattle - where slides are commonplace - emergency management officials made an effort Saturday to educate homeowners on how to prevent them.

As it turns out, a great majority of landslides have some sort of human influence, from chopping down trees to not controlling rainwater.

And that's why homeowners came to Saturday's meeting - to learn what to do, and what not to do on their property.

"I want to restore it to its native state, and remove some of that blackberries and ivy. But I also don't want to create a landslide situation because I live on a steep slope," says Keira Mcgannon, a Beacon Hill homeowner.

How bad can it get?

Late 1996 and early 1997 remains the best reminder. More than 300 landslides rattled Seattle - including the destruction of several homes in the Magnolia neighborhood.

The experts say to take a close look at where you live, and pay attention to things that just don't seem right.

"Areas that have never been muddied before, take a closer look," says Barb Graff of Seattle Emergency Management. "Areas where water is pooling - take a look at that. On hills and slopes, if you notice trees seem to be slanting in a different way, more brush seems to be coming down - that's a potential indicator of a problem."

There's also insurance to consider. If you live in landslide-prone areas, your standard homeowners policy typically excludes "earth movement." You'll need additional, special coverage.

"But a difference-in-conditions policy covers not only landslides, but also mudflow, earthquake and things of that nature," says Karl Newman of the Northwest Insurance Council. "It gives you additional coverage you can't get from a standard homeowners policy."

That type of policy can cost several thousand dollars a year.

And Seattle officials say homeowners should not do anything to their hillside property until they get the OK from the city.


 

This post is an almost perfect example of how all the factors of the complexity model we learned in this course fit together. Here is a city in an MCD that has recognized how their actions affect their environment. Now they are trying to reverse the damage of their urbanization by restoring the land to a somewhat natural habitat. The city is looking at environmental as well as structural factors that contribute to landslides. Seattle is definitely moving in the right direction for they know what dangers lay ahead and are educating the public on what needs to be done to protect not only their homes, but the environment of the area as well. This is a prime example of community taking a complexity based approach to hazards.

CNN producer note

DrAl

CNN producer note

DrAlban of Shkoder, Albania, went up in a flood rescue helicopter yesterday as teams distributed food to isolated homes in the severely flooded city. He says it’s been raining for three weeks and it’s overflowing artificial lakes in the area. He estimates that about a quarter of the city is inundated. 'We have artificial lakes that run hydro power plants. These lakes are getting water in. The government has decided to open the security ports to relieve this. When the ports are opened, all these agricultural lands get covered with water,' he said. The flooding has affected Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia, but he says the worst situation is in Albania.
- zdan, CNN iReport producerban of Shkoder, Albania, went up in a flood rescue helicopter yesterday as teams distributed food to isolated homes in the severely flooded city. He says it’s been raining for three weeks and it’s overflowing artificial lakes in the area. He estimates that about a quarter of the city is inundated. 'We have artificial lakes that run hydro power plants. These lakes are getting water in. The government has decided to open the security ports to relieve this. When the ports are opened, all these agricultural lands get covered with water,' he said. The flooding has affected Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia, but he says the worst situation is in Albania.
- zdan, CNN iReport producer

This is a really good example of how relying on made systems that disturb the environment, things are much more likely to fail. In this case, they were dependant on their man made lakes to supply the energy needs and when those flooded, they had no back up system to rely on. This all has to do with the country’s mitigation strategies and preparedness when it comes to hazards.

Scotland Covered in nowIt’s cold, temperatures are projected to go down as low as -20C. The recorded record low of -16.1C was in Altnaharra which is located in the northern parts of Scotland. The lowest temperature of the winter of 2010 was -22.3C.

Approximately 850 schools have been shut down and 3,000 houses were at sometime without electric power. Scottish Hydro is hoping to have all homes back online by late tonight. Extra personnel have been brought in to help fix the problem.

Being out on the roadways is very dangerous and there are many abandoned vehicles along the way. There have been many roads shut down to hazardous conditions. Travel by air has also been affected with the closing of the Edinburgh Airport at 1800 GMT. Travel by trains has also been interrupted. A ski resort located in the Highlands, Lecht Ski Centre, also had to close down for the day. Emergency areas were set up to help shelter stranded motorist. At first there were 60 people who were looking for protection from the weather by 2000 GMT on Sunday. By Monday, there were 669 people staying there. The weather has been predicted to grow worse this week.

What surprised me about this video was how this particular area should be more than used to winter weather, especially as we start to go into December.  Even if I was a bad blizzard is seems the vulnerability of this community should be low. So, this makes me wonder, what (in anything) was so special about this storm that allowed it to make headlines? From what it looked like, it was a particularly large blizzard for a ski resort to close down and must have been in a particularly populated area.

 

Discovered on LIDAR Images

New Fault Identified in Central Idaho

Researcher at Idaho State University Discovers the Fault on LIDAR Image

Republished from a September, 2010 press release by Idaho State University.


While looking at a highly detailed new topographic image of Idaho’s Sawtooth Range, Idaho State University geosciences professor Glenn Thackray had an "eureka moment" when he discovered a previously unknown active earthquake fault about 65 miles, as the crow flies, from Boise. ISU researchers estimate the fault has been active twice in the last 10,000 years, about 4,100 and 7,000 years ago.

The researchers examined a Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) image. LIDAR is a remote sensing system used to collect topographic data with aircraft-mounted lasers capable of recording elevation measurements at a rate of 25,000 pulses per second and can have a vertical precision of about six inches. The images can be displayed so they don't show an area's vegetation. Four years ago while doing some research on glaciers in the Sawtooth Range, Thackray was examining a high-resolution, "bare-earth" LIDAR image of the mountains: this is when he noticed a line running through the image in the vicinity of Redfish Lake.

"The black line stood out and I thought that it had to be an earthquake fault," Thackray said. "It was long suspected that there was an active fault in the Sawtooths, but without the LIDAR technology it would have been exceptionally hard to find."

Documenting the Fault on the Ground

Since that time, ISU researchers have been on the ground documenting the fault that is at least 25 miles long and could be as long as 40 miles. It is located on the eastern edge of the range and comes within about five miles from the town of Stanley. A portion of it runs through the upper end of Redfish Lake. It runs along the range approximately from near Stanley Lake to at least as far south as Petitt Lake.

65 Miles from Boise - Idaho's Largest City

“The reason this discovery is so important is that it is within the heavily visited areas of the Sawtooth National Recreation area, very close to the town of Stanley, and within 65 miles of Idaho’s largest city, Boise, and the most populated area in the state,” Thackray said. “We would like to know how big the earthquakes are along this fault and how active it is.”

Land-Use, Emergency Planning, Building Codes

Thackray emphasized that the fault is cause for concern, but not alarm, for visitors to and residents of the Stanley-Sawtooth area, and to the residents of the Wood River or Boise valleys. The discovery may have implications for land-use and emergency planning, and perhaps building codes. Depending on the magnitude of a potential earthquake, it could do damage to surrounding areas.

Other Major Faults in Idaho

There are few major, active faults in Idaho. Idaho’s three other major faults run along the base of the Lost River Range (where the famous Borah Peak magnitude 7.3 earthquake, the largest ever recorded in Idaho, occurred in 1983), the Lemhi Range and the Beaverhead Range. Faults are break in the earth’s crust, along which rocks and the earth move. Typically, the earth is moving up on one side of the fault, and moving down on the other.

"It's the movement of the rocks that are important. That is what creates an earthquake hazard," Thackray said.

How Active is the Fault?

After discovering the fault on the LIDAR image and then confirming its existence on the ground, ISU researchers had to determine whether it was an active fault, defined as a fault that has featured an earthquake within the last 10,000 years. Determining whether the fault was active was a challenge for the researchers because most of the fault is located within the Sawtooth Wilderness and Recreation Area.

"Normally, to test a fault you could take in a Cat or backhoe and dig up sediment and rock and use carbon dating to date the occurrence of previous activity," Thackray said. "But we couldn’t do that because the fault is in a wilderness area."

Unexpected Data from Biologists

This is where a little luck and scientific serendipity came into play. Other ISU researchers, biological sciences professor Bruce Finney, postdoctoral researcher Mark Shapley, and ISU geosciences graduate student Eric Johnson, were doing lake sediment core sampling of lakes in the Sawtooths, including Redfish Lake, to study the historical record of sockeye salmon returning to the area. While drilling through the sediment in the upper portion of Redfish Lake the researchers hit levels where there were landslide deposits interrupted the regular accumulation of sediment deposits.

"We were able to date the occurrence of the most recent fault activity by using those drilling samples from the large landslides in Redfish Lake," Thackray said.

"There is a lot that we still don’t know about this fault, but our studies have revealed the outline of its history," he added.

As far as warning and mitigation go, I think this state pretty much has it covered.  Idaho took the correct steps and provides an optimal model for other states to follow (inside and outside the US). They detected the issue, determined the seriousness of the hazard without disrupting the environment, and are keeping a watchful eye on the fault without panicking.  Another thing I like about what they’re doing is they are planning ahead.  They are going to instill evacuation routs, new building codes and whatever mitigation methods necessary to protect the people of Boise, Idaho.  I think that early detection is key in this case and further research about the potential risk of the area will help educate the people on what they can do in the mean time.  Some key things that other nations at risk can take away from this are the importance of early detection, installment of building codes, evacuation routes and public awareness.

Refer to Indonesia Page

Another Indonesian Volcano Threatens to Erupt

Nov 23, 2010 10:11 AM ET

By OurAmazingPlanet Staff

Indonesia is on alert again for a possible volcanic eruption, this time from Mount Bromo, located on the eastern end of the Indonesian island of Java, according to news reports.

The eruption red alert comes just a couple weeks after Mount Merapi's relentless erupting killed more than 300 people. [Related: Mount Merapi's Devastation Seen from Space.]

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"We raised the status of Bromo to the highest red alert level at 3:30 pm (0830 GMT) today. There's a chance of an eruption soon," government volcanologist Surono told AFP.

Bromo started rumbling to life on Nov. 8, the AFP reports, and plumes of smoke and ash were rising from the summit crater on Tuesday (Nov. 23).

But Bromo, unlike Merapi, lies in a less populated region, within the Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park. Merapi has displaced more than 200,000 people from nearby villages.

Bromo is a fairly active volcano; it last erupted was in 2004, killing two tourists.

Bromo is located in the center of the Sandsea Caldera, itself only a portion of the larger Tengger Caldera (a caldera is the circular depression in the center of a volcano's summit). The Sandsea caldera formed around 8,000 years ago, in what must have been a massive eruption. Subsequent volcanic activity formed the cluster of cinder cones in the caldera's center, including Bromo.

According to Erik Klemetti of Big Think's Eruptions blog, Bromo is a different type of volcano than Merapi, one that tends to have smaller eruptions that blech out ash and perhaps small lava flows, but doesn't produce the large pyroclastic flows — scorching rivers of gas and rock — that stratovolcanoes like Merapi do.

Indonesia itself is a very volcanically and seismically active region that lies along the infamous Pacific Ring of Fire. One of the largest volcanic explosions in history, that of Krakatoa in 1883, occurred on the tiny volcanic island of the same name between Java and Sumatra, killing some 40,000 people. The remnant of that spectacular eruption, called Anak Krakatau, has also been rumbling and producing smoke recently.

It's a good thing that this volcano is in an isolated region unlike Merapi. If this wasn't the case, there would be much more serious consequences on our hands.  This recent activity is still of great worry however. If this trend continues (refer to the page on Indonesia's volcanoes), then they could very possibly be starting to face problems closer to densely populated areas.  This is a subject that I hope volcanologists are all over because this pattern could help lead to a future disaster which would allow the government to take mitigation action.

Earthquake risk high in Panama, data suggests

Last Updated: Thursday, November 18, 2010 | 3:01 PM ET .CBC News
A file photo showing a U.S. tanker leaving the Miraflores locks of the Panama Canal on its way to the Pacific Ocean beside a ship carrying grain. New research suggests the canal and nearby Panama City face a significant risk of a large quake. (Alberto Lowe/Reuters)Two faults that run through central Panama have ruptured both independently and in unison over the past 1,400 years, suggesting that Panama City and the Panama Canal face "a significant seismic risk," new research suggests.

That conclusion followed a seismic hazard study undertaken as part of an ongoing expansion of the Panama Canal to allow for larger ships.

Researchers studied the Limon and Pedro Miguel faults and found that both are seismically active and have relatively short recurrence rates for large earthquakes. Recurrence rates are estimates of how frequently quakes are likely to hit a given area.

The Pedro Miguel fault actually runs between two of the locks on the Panama Canal. This fault last ruptured in 1621, resulting in a devastating earthquake.

"That earthquake resulted in nearly [three metres] of displacement where the fault crosses the canal," said lead author Thomas Rockwell, a geologist at San Diego State University. "Another such earthquake today could have dramatic effects."

The authors argue that the Pedro Miguel fault's location and rate of activity should be taken into account in the expansion of the Panama Canal and its new lock system.

The researchers say they found evidence that both the Pedro Miguel and Limon faults may have failed at the same time around 700 AD.

The authors say the apparent ability of these two faults to rupture in unison poses danger to the canal.

"While no fault passes though or beneath any critical structures, the area and structures would be subject to significant shaking," they wrote.

The capital is also at risk, the study's authors say.

"As Panama City lies only a few kilometers from the Pedro Miguel fault, renewed activity on this fault could cause substantial damage to structures that were not designed for strong shaking," they write.

The research is published in Thursday's Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America


Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/11/18/panama-earthquake-risk.html#ixzz15kdG6axC

This article I found quite humorous actually.  I stumbled upon it shortly after watching House Hunters on HGTV.  The particular episode was about a couple looking for a 2 million dollar summer home in Panama.  Their family lived and worked in Florida and liked Panama for its cheap real estate.  I guess there is a flourishing community of semi-wealthy Americans building multimillion dollar homes Near the Panama Canal.  This makes me wonder how many of them are actually knowledgeable of the area and the danger it holds.  I would greatly advise anyone looking into placing their life savings in this area, to maybe do some background reading to make sure their home will still be standing in the years to come.

I thought it was interesting how not only is this a major faut in the seemingly inactive interior of the United States, but how the fault lines are independent of one another. This means that if one earthquake happens, it doesn't necessairly release strain along the entire fault line. Even more interesting however is where these fault lines are located. Not only are they at the base of the mountain, which increases slope failure, but the heavily populated area gives rise for concern. It's good to see that the state of Utah is taking major strides to improve old buildings as well as increasing codes for important new structures such as schools. The hazard poses some more serious effects than the obvious associated with a typical large earthquake however. Some of the most seveare that come to mind are water contamination and nuclear waste. Because so many of these are in direct relation to the fault lines, mitigation of these disastrous effects is nearly impossible. Even though the state is taking strides in improving structures, more work needs to be done to make sure toxic waste is not spewed everywhere.