I watch all the "developments" in horror. I don't see a single sign the government or the NGOs are in the least bit prepared to deal with the horror to come.I wonder, too, how many condos are STILL being built in these high risks areas, as that's just the last laugh, so to speak, of human stupidity!!
Always remember my you are on your own warnings.
When disaster strikes, the government will rescues the rich and that is ALL.
Best to have a PLAN.
In this case, it is wise to remember the biggest killer in KATRINA was a lack of clean water.
A true humanitarian (and this means YOU) would be contacting the Abbotsford food banks, working with good clean organizations (not neocon churces!) to ensure that people have ready access to buses, water
and food. EXTREME care must be taken to ensure
that every man, woman and child is taken into account.
Read up on the Katrina disaster and find out NOW what exactly went wrong and take steps to prevent that level of human calamity.
The want depopulation, but helping man become empowered and destroying RAMPANT sexism and racism will do much more to accomplish the thinning of the population.
Canada knows full well this coming, yet you don't see a single national warning being issued yet.
Why they built TRILLIONS on a highway system knowing that this is coming down is a national scandal. (Ah, but it kept the useless eaters going to work to pay the elite to RULE over them when the time comes.) This explains, too, how Canada intends to cull the "colored population" in Vancouver before the Olympics .. I think our neocon government thinks we will all be too broke to attend the festivities there!! Or they can cull everyone who might protest at the airports coming in.
Below are some odds and ends I've picked up this week as the earthchanges occur!!
Virginia
- 01 September 2007
- Jim Giles
- Magazine issue 2619
THE jewel in Louisiana's coast is almost glittering again. With 10 kilometres of beach, great fishing and a small-town atmosphere, Grand Isle is the ideal refuge for those seeking a second home or a break from the intensity of city life. It is hard to believe that two years ago this week, hurricane Katrina swept across the island. The rebuilding may not quite be done, but tourists are back. "We are open and ready for your visit," proclaims the island's website. For those who study coastal development, however, Grand Isle symbolises not hope, but government folly. The island is regularly hit by severe storms, yet federal building subsidies continue to pour in. By one estimate, over $1 million of public money has been spent for each of Grand Isle's 600 or so permanent residents over the four decades up to the 1990s. After Katrina, more government money poured in. "It's ... The complete article is 1356 wo rds long.
O/T but interesting - Check out this high altitude view of the Reno earthquake "explosions".Western Canada
Earthquakes of the last 30 days |
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click within the boxes for regional information 
Tricia Leslie, The Times
Published: Friday, May 02, 2008Many of us think natural disasters like earthquakes, volcano eruptions and floods won't affect us - only other people, the ones you see on the news.
EVENTS KICK OFF THIS SATURDAY
But what if? A flood, earthquake or a Mount Baker eruption could easily affect valley residents, so the City of Abbotsford is encouraging locals to get involved during Emergency Preparedness Week, which kicks off Saturday at Mill Lake Park.
"We are in an area where the potential for hazards can affect us every day," said the Abbotsford Fire Rescue Service's Ron Hull, who is deputy chief in emergency planning for the city.
"In the event of a large-scale incident, the more prepared you are, the better."
Ideally, people should be prepared to be self-sufficient for 72 hours in such an event, Hull said, but, "realistically, we'd like to see people self-sustainable for a week."
DRINKABLE WATER, FOOD IMPORTANT
Having drinkable water and food are important, Hull said, but so is knowing about the risks, and having a plan in place if your home is destroyed.
Emergency Preparedness Week starts with a pancake breakfast on Saturday, and will feature displays, demonstrations, workshops and a first aid Olympics. Events run from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Other presentations will run at the Seniors' Resource Centre [2478 McCallum Rd., Abbotsford] all week, such as It Won't Happen Here, a personal preparedness event, which starts at 7 p.m. Monday.
For more information, e-mail EPO@abbotsford.ca or call 604-853-3566.
By Natasha Jones - Langley Times - May 02, 200
The recent discovery of a shallow fault line near Abbotsford, capable of producing a massive earthquake, underscores the importance of being prepared for an emergency.
New hazard maps released last week by the U.S. Geological Survey show that the fault, which is 11 km long and 17 km wide, spreads from the Bellingham area north towards Abbotsford.
According to seismologist Craig Weaver, the fault has the capacity to produce an earthquake measuring 6.8, strong enough to cause damage to buildings throughout Metro Vancouver.
But earthquakes are not the only worry for Langley residents and, as Emergency Preparedness Week approaches, Langley’s Provincial Emergency Program co-ordinator Ginger Sherlock is urging everyone to use the opportunity to be prepared.
Train derailments which involve the release of toxic materials would trigger an evacuation of homes and businesses. A pandemic would cause massive disruptions in hospitals, the workplace, schools and public transportation systems, as would flooding, which posed a real threat last year.
And while the prevailing winds all but rule out a significant impact from Mount Baker blowing its top, winds from a volcanic eruption in Hawaii could blow ash over B.C.
At the moment, there are no suggestions that flooding on the scale anticipated a year ago will occur this spring, but all it would take is a spell of warm weather to melt snow all at once for major flooding to follow, Sherlock said.
“Mother Nature is unpredictable,” she said.
If for no other reason, be prepared. “It takes time to think personally how you are going to be prepared,” she said.
“Everyone needs to think, ‘How will a certain event impact me?’”
For example, people in wheelchairs need to know that there is someone who will help them. A personal support network is crucial for everyone, and someone in this network should have a key to your home, know how to operate medical equipment and where emergency supplies are kept.
Anyone on medication should keep a list, including dosage, and note all allergies.
Sherlock urges everyone to have “out of area contact cards.” Given to family and friends, these record pertinent details which can be relayed to contacts living outside the Lower Mainland.
Sherlock said that if land line phones are knocked out in an emergency, out-of-area lines may still be intact.
Emergencies can strike at any time, often with little warning, and 95 percent of those ‘rescued’ are done so by regular people, family and friends, Sherlock said.
“Everyone has a role to play in learning how to be better prepared,” Sherlock said, adding: “We need to reach out and help one another, be it business to business or neighbour to neighbour. When we know the risks, plan for or minimize those risks, we are not only prepared, but resilient as a community.”
“Don’t be left hanging,” Sherlock warns.
The City and Township of Langley will join the national campaign for Emergency Preparedness Week, May 4 to 10.
A number of activities have been planned to heighten awareness and help educate all Canadians.
Of the 57 identified hazards in B.C., earthquakes are among the most severe. Two thousand are detected every year, and while a small number are large enough to cause damage, the threat of a major one is very real.
Earthquakes cannot be stopped, but there is much we can do to protect ourselves, our families, and our property, Sherlock said. As with all hazards, we all must prepare to be self-sufficient in the event of a disaster.
‘Demystifying earthquakes — what this means to Langley’ is a first step. Led by Maiclaire Bolton, a PEP seismologist, the event will be held at the Murrayville fire hall, 22170 50 Ave., on Tuesday, May 6.
There will be two sessions, the first from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p .m., and the second from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
As space is limited, those who plan to attend should contact Christine Swanson at 604-514-2820 or cswanson@langleycity.ca to register.
Historically, B.C. has experienced one of the world’s largest earthquakes. British Columbia has been impacted by seven earthquakes with a magnitude of seven or greater in the past 100 years.
These “great” earthquakes like this are rare, occurring every few centuries, but damaging earthquakes can still occur relatively often, approximately once every few decades.
These more frequent earthquakes are of great concern as they can occur inland and closer to the urban centres of Vancouver and Victoria.
Students to Test 'Tsunami Shelters'
Their tsunami shelters are only made out of small wooden blocks and held together by toothpaste used for glue, but they also incorporate months of study with computer-aided design, learning about engineering principles, applying skills to real world problems and the simple ingenuity of hundreds of middle school students from Oregon coastal and rural areas. And now, it’s crunch time. Or maybe collapse time. This Thursday and Friday, about 350 students will travel to the Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory at Oregon State University to see how their one-fiftieth scale models stand up to real wave tests.
This “Tsunami Shelter Challenge” is part of a two-year effort to increase student science and technology skills, using issues that seem relevant – in this case, building a vertical-escape tsunami shelter that could help save lives if such an event hit the Pacific Northwest.
“These students have worked the past year learning about tsunami science, the engineering of structures, and how computational modeling is used to design and test structures,” said Rozeanne Steckler, creator of the project and director of the Northwest Alliance for Computational Science and Engineering at OSU.
“They then used a custom-built tsunami shelter simulator to design and test their structures on a computer,” she added. “Now in the wave basin we’re going to simulate waves that would mimic the 2004 East Asian tsunami. And the big question is: Which structures will be left standing?”
Working in small teams, the students learned about how tsunamis and storm surges happen, the forces they generate, and the types of structural design it would take to withstand them. Testing of their creations will take place in OSU’s Tsunami Wave Basin, the largest facility of its type in the world.
A vertical-escape shelter tries to save lives by helping people get above, rather than away from an incoming wave, in the very short time frame of a few minutes that may be available. The structure needs to be high enough to be above the wave, and strong enough not to collapse from its forces. Most of the Pacific Northwest is now believed to be vulnerable to potentially devastating tsunamis, due mostly to potential future massive earthquakes on the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
The initiative has been funded in part by a $75,000 grant from Symantec Corporation, as part of a corporate goal to encourage more young students to pursue careers in science and technology. It included support for Oregon teachers to be trained with the program, and encourage gender equity in its implementation.
Source: Oregon State University
Cascadia Subduction Zone
Two Contrasting Models of Lithospheric Structure
The subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate beneath North America changes markedly along the length of the subduction zone, notably in the angle of subduction, distribution of earthquakes, volcanism, geologic and seismic structure of the upper plate, and regional horizontal stress. To investigate these characteristics, we conducted detailed density modeling experiments of the crust and mantle along two transects across the Cascadia subduction zone. One crosses Vancouver Island and the Canadian margin, and the other crosses the margin of central Oregon. Both density models were constructed independently to a depth of approximately 50 km. We gathered all possible geologic, geophysical, and borehole data to constrain the density calculations. The final densities for the Oregon and Vancouver lithosphere models were obtained from gravity inversions.
Our results confirm that the downgoing slab of the Cascadia subduction zone dips significantly steeper beneath Oregon than beneath Vancouver Island, lending support to the idea that the Juan de Fuca plate is segmented from north to south. In addition, our gravity models indicate that the mantle wedge beneath western Oregon (i.e., below the western Cascades) is lighter than the mantle beneath the Canadian continental crust. This low density agrees with the low mantle velocities observed in the mantle and the present day extensional regime of the Pacific Northwest.
A gravity low at the deformation front of the Oregon margin, absent along the Vancouver margin, can be explained by the different bathymetry of the two regions and by the depth to the top of the subducting Juan de Fuca plate. If the accretionary prisms along these profiles were modeled with equal densities, a density inhomogeneity in the lower part of the models would be necessary. Thus that the density of the accretionary prism for the Vancouver profile must be approximately 0.1-0.2 g/cm3 greater than that for Oregon. A density difference within the accretionary prisms also agrees with other data. We note that the volume of accreted sediments is approximately twice as large along the Vancouver profile than along the Oregon profile, and the prism reaches a greater depth (approximately 20 km as compared with 12 km for the Oregon profile). This implies that the sediments within the accretionary prism at Vancouver Island are at a higher metamorphic grade, and therefore have higher densities.
We find that a substantial part of the coastal gravity maxima for both lines is caused by increasing density with depth in the subducting plate. In the proposed model, the maximum possible density of the slab was used to satisfy constraints for the average density of the near coastal crust for both profiles. If a density increase with depth is not introduced into the model, very high densities would be required for the near surface coastal and continental crustal blocks.
View the Vancouver or the Oregon profile at a larger scale annotated with density values.
My friend
Robert Somerville calls my attention to an article in the
NewScientistEnvironment that says the
San Andreas fault is a victim. It's the Cascadia Subduction Zone's fault.
Chris Goldfinger and colleagues at Oregon State University, Corvallis, analysed sediment records from deep sea canyons that stretched back over the last three thousand years, looking for the disturbed strata that are the hallmarks of big earthquakes.
They found evidence that "...the massive Cascadia quakes – eight of which Goldfinger estimates exceeded magnitude 9.0 on the Richter scale – trigger events that top out around magnitude 7.9 along the
San Andreas by stress transfer."
Their evidence also suggests that the Cascadia is 90 years overdue for a "big one".
FROM PAM WISEMAN.com
