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Where Not To Live

Posted on June 30, 2017 by Bill Leave a comment

Living in Colorado, I may be arrogant about all the inferior places in the country, but the ones on this list are unsafe. They are also popular. It seems people like to live on the edge.

San Andreas Fault

At the top of my list is anywhere near the San Andreas Fault. When two tectonic plates are bumping along one another, things get shaky. Just look at those aerial photos of the gouges the sliding plates created. Lots of energy goes into motion of that magnitude, and there is plenty left over to bring buildings down. The Los Angeles and San Francisco areas have a lot to offer. Climate, scenery, the Pacific, and all those geologic features created by the colliding plates.

The place of greatest folly is the Portola Valley.

Fault in Portola Valley After 1906 Earthquake

Just west of Stanford University, the valley is not a stream valley, it’s a fault valley. The valley is full of big houses located not near the fault, but on it. Well, not right on the fault, you must build fifty feet away from the fault. Portola Valley is one of the richest zip codes in the country which is a good thing; the people will have the money to rebuild somewhere else. There is a strict building code, but the fault is just too damn close.

A relative used to live in Menlo Park, one of the charming and wealthy communities in Silicon Valley. Her house was midway between the San Andreas and Hayward faults in a flood plain. What are those people thinking? Pretty country, though. She had redwood trees in her front yard. One of my favorite ironies is that the west coast office of The United States Geological Survey is in Menlo Park. What were they thinking?

Shaking in Parkfield, Oakland, San Francisco, Northfield, Palmdale, and soon. The entire Los Angeles area is at risk. There hasn’t been a big quake in some years.that means increasing amounts of energy is being stored along the fault. It’s not if, but when.

Mt. Rainier

Those tectonic plates are at it it the Pacific Northwest as well. There are earthquakes there, but the real danger is those pesky volcanos. All those striking photographs of Seattle nestled beneath Mt Rainier? It is an active volcano, folks. It has been a while, but every day is one day closer to the next one. Mt. Hood is due as well. Are you old enough to remember Mt. St. Helens? 1980. Not many lives were lost, it is in a remote area, but the blast flattened the forest for miles.

The real danger from those big volcanos is pyroclastic flows and lahars. The eruption releases massive amounts of ash and larger chunks (clasts). In addition, parts of the mountain blow apart, and the whole mess heads downhill. It is hot, coming out of the volcano, and wet from the ice and snow on the mountain. There are huge landslides contributing to the mass, which can travel as fast as 300 mph. Everything in the flow’s path is buried or carried with the flow. What is scary is that Seattle, Tacoma, Eugene, and other towns are in the path of the flows.

Track of the Lahar after Mt. St. Helens eruption.

In an earthquake, buildings collapse and maybe burn. A pyroclastic flow kills everything in its path. If the heat doesn’t do it, the ash in the air is so dense it fills the nostrils of any animal. It also buries land with upwards of several feet of ash. Lahars travel down valleys and is a mass of ash, rock, water, and any other thing in its path. It flows down the valley and when it stops, it is the consistency of concrete. No living thing survives. Stay away. The Puyallup Valley is most vulnerable from a Rainier eruption.

Don’t live right on the coast either. Earthquakes can generate tsunamis that will sweep away anything in their paths, sometimes far inland. In addition, sea level rise will drown lots of development.

Salt Lake and the Wasatch Mountains. Fault at base of mountains

Moving east, the Salt Lake mountain front is overdue for a big earthquake. The city developed at the base of the Wasatch Mountains, with a huge fault at their base that moves fairly regularly. Watch out, people, Zion is going to shake.

Another place to avoid is Florida. A beautiful place with amazing wildlife, the peninsula is just a slow moving disaster punctuated by somewhat lesser disasters. The biggest problem, it is all limestone. Not just limestone but limestone honeycombed with water filled voids. The voids are growing as the abundant rainfall soaks in and dissolves even more limestone. Sinkholes are the result. There are more all the time. In addition, Florida is low and flat. Low enough for much of it to go under as seal level rises. It’s happening. Every flood tide, water flows out of manholes in subdivisions north of Miami. The rise will continue, and Mr. Trump isn’t helping.

Charlotte Harbor

Oh, and there are the hurricanes. They sure do make a lot of messes. Climate change is predicted to increase the number and intensity of the storms. My late in-laws lived for a time in one of those retirement trailer parks on Charlotte Harbor, on the Gulf coast. The trailer park is gone, thanks to Hurricane Charley in 2004. My in-laws had moved to Mt. Dora before the hurricane. Mt. Dora is in the middle of the state on high ground (around 300 feet). They have had 77 hurricanes since 1930. One of the storms knocked out power for two weeks.

The only time I have had real reason for fear while in an airplane was when we flew into Orlando during a thunderstorm. We were on approach when I saw the storm hit us. The visibility went to zero and turbulence rocked the plane. The pilot shoved the throttles forward and went around. By the time we circled around, the storm had moved on.

The entire East Coast is also hurricane country. The ocean also seems to want to move inland. Don’t be in the way. The ocean is rising. The coast is moving west.

New Orleans After Katrina

The Gulf Coast is also a danger zone. Subject to hurricanes, low lying areas can also be flooded by rising rivers. The Mississippi Delta is also no place to live. It is sinking. The Mississippi River mud is going over the continental shelf, thanks to the Corps of Engineers channeling the river straight to the gulf rather than allowing it to build the delta. The river is going to win. It will not allow itself to be contained for long. Louisiana, beware.

Go up the river to New Madrid, Missouri south of Memphis. Earthquake country. The last time it shook, bells rang in Boston. That was in 1812, when the population in the quake region was small. It is small no more. St. Louis is vulnerable.

Tornado

Now that we are in the Midwest, let’s discuss tornadoes. The entire region is at risk, with devastating storms anywhere. Tornado Alley, from Texas through Oklahoma and to Kansas, Missouri, South Dakota, and Iowa has the most danger, but anywhere east of the Rockies has some risk.

The general idea here is that nowhere is completely safe, nature being what it is, but there are some areas that I would not live in. I think I will stay in Colorado away from those canyons that like to flood. Oh, wait, if Yellowstone lets loose, we’re toast.

Posted in Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Mt. St. Helens, Stories, Subsidence, Tornadoes, Volcanos

Shaking and Baking

Posted on June 23, 2016 by Bill Leave a comment

As you are aware if you are a regular reader of my ravings, I am a geology buff. I like the Big Picture, mid-ocean rifts and rises, tectonic plates shoving one another around, places where the hot insides spout out of the ground, mountains rising and being worn away, and the oceans becoming ever more salty. Most of the time, all this is a slow process, but sometimes all hell breaks loose.

San Andreas Fault

Just look at that photo of the San Andreas Fault. Things are clearly on the move and the land is being torn apart. The Pacific Plate is sliding northward along the North American Plate. Pasadena will one day be next to Anchorage. Don’t wait up for it, though. The Pacific coast of North America is one of the most seismically active regions on the Ring of Fire surrounding the Pacific Ocean. It shakes, it blows, it smokes, it flows.

Places like that make nice places to live. Most of the time. There is the ocean, lots of pretty landscapes with beautiful mountains nearby, and places to grow things. Just look at the Seattle-Tacoma area. Bays, inlets, rivers, islands, and a big old mountain to look at. It is easy to forget that mountain is a large volcano just biding it’s time until it lets loose again.

Mount Rainier. Close to Town

If Rainier resembles Mt. St. Helens in the way it erupts, there might be some warning. What we won’t know is how big, exactly when, and for how long. There is a lot going on in that area. Boeing, Microsoft, REI, millions of people, and Starbucks are a few examples. If a swarm of magnitude four earthquakes begin, what to do? Shut everything down and evacuate? Where will everyone go? What about looting and plundering? What if it doesn’t erupt for months, if ever?

Pyroclastic flows of very hot, wet, chunky stuff have flowed off that mountain all the way to the ocean. The old cliche says “It is not if, but when.” We just do not know when. So, life along the Pacific Rim is always something of a gamble. I have felt small earthquakes and looked into the crater of a Volcano in Costa Rica, a lovely, green, paradise. Earthquakes destroy roads and railroads, volcanos bury villages, and life goes on.

Irazu, Costa Rica

Small, poor Costa Rica is one thing, the Seattle-Tacoma area, or Los Angeles, or Portland, or Eugene, or San Francisco are entirely different matters. No amount of preparation can take into account all the things which might happen. Prediction is in its infancy. Mt. St. Helens in hindsight gave lots of warning, but the disaster was huge in a relatively isolated area. When Rainier or Mt. Hood let go the disaster will be in a heavily populated area with just a few ways out.

Currently there are lots of earthquakes in the oil field regions of Texas, Oklahoma, and surrounding areas. I wouldn’t worry too much if I lived there, the odds of a Big One are fairly small. St. Louis and Salt Lake are at more risk. The West Coast is the big danger zone. The earth will keep moving, the plates will continue to slide. Eruptions and quakes will continue to happen. My solution? Don’t live there. What is your plan?

Posted in Apocalyptic Prophesies, Cliches, Earthquakes, Environment, Fear, Mt. St. Helens, Stories, Volcanos

Our Little Planet

Posted on May 29, 2015 by Bill One comment

Mt. St. Helens showing a Lahar, a mud and ash flow that ran 50 miles downstream during the eruption.

Stephen Hawking says we need to have to develop means to get off the planet when the Big One, whatever it is, is about to strike. That is not terribly realistic, relocating several billion people to a place light-years away. In other words, life on earth is toast. Someday.In the meantime, life goes on. It is spooky how we are fouling the planet. We humans may create the need to get off this little ball without the means to do so. In other words, life on earth is toast. Sometime, maybe sooner.So, let’s deal with what we have while we can. There are things we can do, but the means to act are part of a political process. As long as politics is motivated by greed at the level it is currently, we are likely toast. Maybe sooner.

The cliff that collapsed into a massive mudslide is seen covered with felled trees in Oso, Washington March 31, 2014. Recovery teams struggling through thick mud up to their armpits and heavy downpours at the site of the devastating landslide in Washington state are facing yet another challenge – an unseen and potentially dangerous stew of toxic contaminants. REUTERS/Rick Wilking (UNITED STATES – Tags: DISASTER ENVIRONMENT) – RTR3JE4A

As individuals, we must do what we can, and get along with our lives. We can help, and maybe stave off the inevitable to some degree. We can respond to natural events. Floods, earthquakes, tornados, landslides, hurricanes, those things we can react to and help. We must do more than sit in the Lazy-Boy looking at the screen eating Doritos. We can give money away, stir things up in meetings, vote, and give some time.

Well, we can do things until Yellowstone blows. It is surprising how resilient humans are. Ice ages, cataclysms, droughts, they may kill some and move others around, but the species has struggled on through it all. We haven’t been around very long, however, and haven’t had to deal with any Really Big Ones in the blink of time we have been around.

The Yellowstone Caldera

The Park Service says the Yellowstone super-volcano is pretty safe, that most eruptions are limited lava flows. But, someday, it will be like the last big one that created a caldera almost as large as the park. The Snake River Plain in Idaho with all those lava flows is the track of the Yellowstone hot spot as the North American Plate traveled west. The plate moves at about the rate your fingernails grow. As it moves, it erupts. It just takes a while.

Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, drought, all interest me, but I am most interested in geologic cataclysm. One of my favorite potential geologic disasters is climate-related. Years ago I read an article proposing that sea level rise could lead to the Gulf Stream moving over the continental shelf and invading the Arctic Ocean. Europe would cool off with the loss of that warm water and the Arctic Ocean would thaw. With all that open water in the north, evaporation would increase, snowfall would increase in the Arctic, precipitating a new ice age.

I haven’t seen much on that hypothesis lately. Researchers seem to be concentrating on the rapid melting going on without Gulf Stream migrations, although the Gulf Stream does seem to be weakening. There are just so many variables to consider.

Ash From a Yellowstone Eruption

With respect to the Yellowstone super volcano exploding and killing most life in North America, there is only one variable: when. A couple of years ago I was on a ramble in Wyoming. Fort Laramie was my destination, but on the way I looked for the Oregon-California trail wagon ruts along the Platte outside Guernsey. The ruts are dramatic, going up from the river bottom to some higher ground. They are axle-deep in some tan colored rock that looks like sandstone at first glance. It is volcanic tuff from the last time Yellowstone blew. The layer is four or five feet deep about 200 miles from Yellowstone. That is a lot of stuff blown into the atmosphere. All that material along with the CO2 and SO2 would kill most everything for many hundreds of miles.

The most recent volcanic eruption in Colorado was about 4500 years ago at Dotsero. The entire San Juan mountain range is volcanic. Huerfano Butte near Walsenberg is a volcanic neck. There are eroded lava flows on Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. There are lots of hot springs in Colorado. Where is all that heat coming from? Will the Glenwood Hot Springs Pool erupt? Will Steamboat Springs’ boiler explode?

Landslides. There is even one not far from Fruita on I-70. Debeque canyon on the Colorado River is famous landslide country. That landslide that killed three men outside Collbran last year is the same geologically. Green Mountain in Lakewood has a landslide that destroyed several houses. The Vail/Eagle River valley is good landslide country. All it takes is a lot of moisture in spring. The canyons incising the front range are landslide prone. All that rock will eventually find its way to Louisiana as mud.

The upside of all that landslide country is that it gives geologists and earthmoving contractors work.

There is a radioactive isotope of radon gas that is common in some of our Colorado rocks that houses are built on. Basements become carcinogenic. There is an anthropomorphic cause of radioactive basements as well. In Grand Junction, uranium mill tailings were used as backfill around basements is some subdivisions. More work for geologists, and a Superfund site.

Debris is strewn over an area affected by an earthquake and tsunami in Miyako, Iwate Prefecture, March 14, 2011. REUTERS/Aly Song (JAPAN – Tags: DISASTER ENVIRONMENT)

Earthquakes. Again two causes, natural and human-caused. All those earthquakes in Texas and Oklahoma caused by injecting fracking water back underground have a Colorado history. Rocky Mountain Arsenal outside Denver was used to manufacture poison gas for military use and later poison gas for agriculture. They pumped a lot of the toxic wastewater down wells and set off earthquakes. They stopped that. The oil companies are not stopping. Yet.

Colorado is earthquake country. Making mountains, shoving rock around to make room for more rock shakes things up. The Flatirons outside Boulder used to be flat. North and South Table mountains are capped with basalt from lava flows. These processes are still going on in lots of places.

The Rio Grande Rift is a Rift Valley stretching from Southern New Mexico to north of Leadville. The earth is pulling apart. Look at the San Luis valley, that is a lot of pulling. It is still going on, but slowly in human terms. There will be earthquakes. The biggest quake-causing fault near Denver is the Golden Fault, formed when the Rockies were uplifted. That uplift has happened about three times. The mountains come up, get eroded down, come up again, get eroded again. Will it happen again? There seems to be some weakness in the crust around here.

What the Meteor Looked Like Impacting off Yucutan

There are asteroids out there that have orbits that coincide with the earth’s orbit. It has happened before, could again. I saw Charlie Rose interviewing Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and he mentioned the possibility. We have the technology to deal with the the threat, but it will take a lot of money and cooperation. Will it happen before we need it? Will it be too late when the danger is imminent? Ask a Republican. I hope you sleep well tonight.

Posted in Colorado History, Colorado Mountains, Earthquakes, Extinction, Floods, Geology, Landslides, Mt. St. Helens, Stories, Volcanos, Yellowstone Volcano

In the Path of Destruction

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Bill One comment

Mt. St. Helens Before Eruption

I started a post last week about volcanos, then I got sick, so here it is now. I was inspired to write this because I follow the United States Geological Survey (USGS)and the American Geological Society on Facebook. The 18th of May was the 25th anniversary of the Mount St. Helens eruption. Both organizations ran daily posts about the most violent volcanic eruption in the continental United States in recorded history.

The USGS quoted extensively from In the Path of Destruction, a book about the events around the eruption. That eruption in1980 was the most violent volcanic eruption the United States has experienced in recorded history.

Start of Eruption. Landslide

Close to some big cities but relatively isolated, only about 56 people were killed. The low death toll was also a result of the Forest Service, the local county sheriffs, and Weyerhauser Timber restricting access to the area around the mountain, a popular recreational area.

In the Path of Destruction has two sections, narratives of events before and during the eruption, and many eyewitness reports collected by author Richard Waitt, a USGS geologist present at Mt. St. Helens starting in March 1980, when the volcano started coming alive and throughout the eruption and aftermath. Three weeks after the eruption he was in a bar talking to a man who had lived through the eruption and realized the stories of witnesses could add to scientific knowledge of the event.

This book is one you lose sleep over. Do you remember May 18, 1980? Those people do, their memories are as vivid now as my memory of the day Kennedy was shot. Waitt interviewed a wide range of people from USGS geologists, pilots in the air nearby when it blew, campers, loggers, and local residents who survived. Their stories are why the book kept me awake. The author’s narratives are well researched and written. He puts the science, events, and the human story into a book that will hold even those who are not geology geeks.

The Big Boom

In fact as a geology geek, I found myself wanting more science. That is probably good for most readers. A big part of the story is the unusual behavior of the volcano before it blew. There were hundreds of earthquakes in the two months before the big eruption, accompanied by venting, minor ash falls, and the formation of a small crater. The strangest phenomenon was the formation of a huge bulge on the north side of the mountain.

The bulge grew about five feet every day, accompanies by swarms of small earthquakes some of the USGS people thought were from magma intruding into the bulge. The bulge grew, with vertical cracks forming on its face. Some thought a major eruption was imminent, others thought it would be a relatively minor event. Politics kept moving the roadblocks back and forth, with logging being allowed outside the immediate danger zone. It’s tough enforcing a roadblock with logging trucks coming out of the closed area.

In 1980, eruptions could not be forecast. In 2015, earthquakes can’t be forecast. People wanted in the closed area to go to their cabins, to hike, camp, and fish. We think of volcanic eruptions going up from a crater at the summit. On May 18th, a magnitude five earthquake caused the bulge to slide. That caused the mountain above the bulge to slide.

View of Mt. St. Helens from Mt. Margaret, July 27 1980
Devastation

The accounts of the survivors and witnesses of the eruption are what make the book so gripping. For me events thirty five years ago came alive. I won’t go into any of the stories. Read for yourself. The photographs and maps provide a useful context and show the eruption as it happened. I continue to be astounded that one plate smashing into another at the rate your fingernails grow can produce events like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes like the one in Nepal. There is lots of really hot stuff down there in our Earth, and if the crust gets weakened, here it comes.

A few weeks ago I was headed east from Gunnison up the Tomichi Creek valley. The rocks looked sort of like sandstone, so common here in Colorado, but they just didn’t look right. It dawned on me. Volcanic tuff, just like the ash that blew out of Mt. St. Helens. It happened here and in geologic terms, not that long ago. Maybe 65 million years ago, give or take.

Posted in In the Path of Destruction, Mt. St. Helens, Stories, Volcanos