Natural Disasters to
Remember.
Mount Huascaran in 1970 let go of a chunk of ice measuring 900m wide and
1500m long during an earthquake. The ice crashed down the mountain
gathering rock, dirt and other debris. It started to melt and the water mixed
with the dirt creating a mudslide that buried the town of Yungay killing
20,000. The slide reached speeds of 210 km/hr. In all nearly 70,000 people
lost their lives.
Krakatoa is a volcanic island in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. In 1883 an eruption
ejected more than 25 cubic kilometres of rock, ash, and pumice [1], and generated the loudest sound ever
historically reported.The explosion was distinctly heard as far away as Australia (approx. 3100 km, and the island
of Rodrigues near Mauritius (approx. 4800km). Shock waves reverberated around the world seven times and were
felt for five days. 165 villages and towns were destroyed and 132 seriously damaged, at least 36,417 (official toll)
people died, and many thousands were injured by the eruption, mostly in the tsunamis which followed the
explosion.
Tide gauges also recorded the sea wave's passage far from Krakatau. The wave "reached Aden in 12 hours, a
distance of 3800 nautical miles, usually traversed by a good steamer in 12 days". The dust that went into the
atmosphere created spectacular suns that appeared green, and blue , spectacular sunsets occurred for years as
far away as New York. It changed the climate of the planet for the next year lowering the temperature by 1.2
degrees Celsius
New eruptions at the volcano since 1927 have built a new island, called Anak Krakatau (child of Krakatoa).
An active stratovolcano, is located in southwest Washington State, USA approximately a 3 hour
drive from Seattle, WA and a 2 and 1/2 hour drive from Portland. It was 9,677 feet before the
eruption and 8,363 feet after. The largest landslide in recorded history swept down the mountain at
speeds of 70 to 150 miles per hour and buried the North Fork of the Toutle River under an average
of 150 feet of debris. Some areas are covered by as much as 600 feet. The lateral blast swept
out of the north side of MSH at 300 miles per hour. Temperatures reached as high as 660 degrees
F .The snow melted and created mudflows that destroyed 27 bridges, 200 homes, 185 miles of
roadway, and 15 miles of railway .
57 people were killed as a result of the eruption , 7,000 big game animals, 12 million Chinook and
Coho salmon, and millions of birds and small mammals are believed to have died in the eruption.
The California earthquake of April 18, 1906 ranks as one of the most significant
earthquakes of all time. The quake ruptured the northernmost 477 kilometers of
the San Andreas fault. The earthquake and resulting fire would be remembered
as one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States. About
3000 deaths occurred. Between 225,000 and 300,000 people were left homeless
out of a population of about 400,000. As damaging as the earthquake and its
aftershocks were, the fires that burned out of control afterward were much more
destructive. About 90% of the total destruction.,some initially fueled by natural
gas mains broken by the quake.
First recording of a quake with motion pictures, lots of scientific evidence
gathered for the first time. Seismology emerging as a field.
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, known by the scientific community as the
Sumatra-Andaman earthquake, was an undersea earthquake that occurred at
00:58:53 UTC (07:58:53 local time) on December 26, 2004. The earthquake
triggered a series of lethal tsunamis that spread throughout the Indian Ocean,
killing large numbers of people. The magnitude of the earthquake was originally
recorded as 9.0 but has been upgraded to between 9.1 and 9.3 Recent analysis
indicates the number of casualties were 186,983 dead and 42,883 missing, for a
total of 229,866 affected This earthquake was also reported to be the longest
duration of faulting ever observed, lasting between 500 and 600 seconds, and it
was large enough that it caused the entire planet to vibrate at least half an inch, or
over a centimetre
On August 24, 79 Mount Vesuvius literally blew its top, spewing tons of molten
ash, pumice and sulfuric gas miles into the atmosphere. A "firestorm" of poisonous
vapors and molten debris engulfed the surrounding area suffocating the
inhabitants of the neighboring Roman resort cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and
Stabiae. The cities remained buried and undiscovered for almost 1700 years until
excavation began in 1748.
1960 May 22
Magnitude 9.5
The Largest Earthquake in the World
A piece of the Pacific seafloor (the Nazca Plate)
about the size of California slid fifty feet beneath the
continent of South America. Like a spring, the lower
slopes of the South American continent offshore
snapped upwards as much as twenty feet while
land along the Chile coast dropped about ten feet.
The main tsunami ran through the Pacific Ocean
and devastated Hilo, Hawaii, 10,000 kilometers
from the epicenter, as well as coastal regions of
Japan. The total number of fatalities from the
earthquake and tsunami was estimated to 6,000 .
On February 20, 1943 a farmer,
Dionisio Pulido, and his wife Paula
were burning shrubbery in their
cornfield when they observed the
earth in front of them swell upward
and crack to form a fissure 2-2.5 m
across. They heard hissing sounds
and later described the rise of
"smoke" from the fissure, which
had the repugnant smell of rotten
eggs. The "rotten egg" smell is a
hallmark of H2S gas, and the crack
that opened in front of them would,
within hours, develop into a small
volcano. After roughly one year the
volcano had grown 336 meters tall.
For the next eight years the
volcano would continue erupting. It
reached a final height of 424 m.
Atlantis has been one of the western world's favorite
legends. Most of the information we have about Atlantis
comes from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato.
The legend:
On this huge island was a "great and wonderful empire"
where brave, virtuous people lived in a kind of paradise.
But this peaceful existence came to an end when the people
of Atlantis began to love power more than they loved the
gods. They waged war against the rest of the world, but
were ultimately defeated by the wise and moral Athenians.
Then, some 9,000 years before Plato's own time, or around
9,500 B.C.E., earthquakes sunk Atlantis into the sea.
Some have argued that Atlantis was in the Americas, or in
the Canary Islands, or in Antarctica. Others think Atlantis
was in fact the Greek island of Thera, also known as
Santorini—a theory fed by recent archaeological
discoveries.
One group of scientists believes that conditions are ideal for a tsunami-producing
landslide on the island of La Palma in the Canaries. The western flank of the
island's active volcano has the potential to give way in a future eruption. If it did, a
huge mass of rock weighing 500,000 million tons would fall into the Atlantic
Ocean. Experts in Switzerland have simulated the potential effects of such a
collapse. Their model shows that it could generate a wave capable of engulfing
every port on the east coast of the U.S and Canada, which they believe may have
happened during a similar tsunami 120,000 years ago. Volcanism in the region is
largely caused by hotspots in oceanic crust.
Canada has examples of almost every
type of volcano. Although none are
erupting now, at least 3 did in the last few
hundred years and numerous others
have the potential to erupt in the near
future.