April 11, 2016 - ALASKA - An earthquake with preliminary magnitude of 5.6 has been recorded near
Kiska Volcano, Alaska on 11 April 2016 20:10:35.
The earthquake
epicenter was located at precisely 109km SW of Kiska Volcano, Alaska and
at a depth of approximately 28 km.
A provisional tsunami alert have
been issued for the region following this earthquake.
Other details
about the earthquake were not immediately available, and there were no
immediate reports of damage or casualties. We will update this report as
soon as we have more information.
Below is a map showing the location of the earthquake and additional
information pertaining to the exact location of the epicenter.
Magnitude: 5.6
Location: 109km SW of Kiska Volcano, Alaska
Time in GMT: 11 April 2016 20:10:35
Latitude of Epicenter: 51.4
Longitude of Epicenter: 176.5
Depth: 28 km
April 11, 2016 - AUSTRALIA - A two-year-old girl has been bitten by a wild dog during a beach picnic on a holiday in Western Australia.
The Dwyer family were holidaying at the Kooljaman resort at Cape
Leveque, 220km north of Broome, on Friday evening when the attack
occurred.
Christine Dwyer, 27, said they were having an evening picnic on the
beach when the animal approached her daughter Stella and attempted to
steal her stuffed toy elephant.
Speaking to ABC News, Christine explained: "[Stella] tried to crawl away and was crying and it just ran back in and grabbed her on the lower back and buttock.
"It tried to drag her backwards but it only got maybe six inches."
Ms Dwyer said resort staff were walking down to the beach as the
incident occurred, adding: "They were very helpful, they continued to
shoo it away and took us up to the nurses to make sure she didn't need
any tetanus injections or anything like that, and just clean up the
little scratches and puncture wounds that she received through the
nappy."
The Daily Mailreports
that staff at the resort had already been looking for the dingo as it
had been stealing rubbish from the local tip and becoming more bold with
guests.
The paper adds that it is believed the animal was captured and put down following the incident. - Travel.
April 11, 2016 - CONGO - The question I keep getting when I tell people that I jumped into Nyiragongo, an active volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo is: "What did you do to the mountain!?"
It's an odd question, but it makes sense when you realize that Nyiragongo is suddenly undergoing a new, more active phase. And it's got the volcanologists at the Goma Observatory worried.
New activity in the crater over the last few weeks has spurred the
scientists into action as a new vent has opened up on the ledge just
above the lava lake. This was preceded by a series of earthquakes that
knocked large rocks off the crater walls that I had only recently
scaled.
The ledge that the vent opened on is the one that I didn't make it down
to, but the rest of the team did. However, I did stand directly above
the area in which it opened, but, at the time, I took no notice of the
nondescript ground far below me. I had zero inkling that less then 10
days after I left, magma would boil out of a newly formed crack in the
earth.
The vent has formed on the side of the caldera closest to the city of
Goma at the base of the mountain. In addition, new fumoroles (gas and
steam vents) have opened up on the flank of the volcano close to where
lava erupted in the 2002 eruption. In that eruption, 147 people lost
their lives and over a third of Goma was destroyed.
The eruption was not explosive like Mount St. Helens, but
instead, effusive like Mount Kilauea in Hawaii. During the eruption of
Nyiragongo, lava flowed down the slopes from cracks in the side of the
mountain at speeds that reached 100 km/h. The chemical composition of
the rock makes the lava extremely liquid.
The concern right now is that this active phase could be a signal that a new eruption is imminent.
Since the 2002 eruption, the city has expanded, but still lacks basic
infrastructure that would allow quick evacuation. Goma simply is not a
city that can be evacuated fast.
When I was there, only a few roads were fully paved and those were
within the city core. The sprawling conglomeration of tin roofed shacks
and cinder block buildings stretched haphazardly in every direction.
Despite the efforts to rebuild the city after the long civil war, it is
functional but struggling. Evacuation is simply not an option. This is
why observation and early warning are critical to survival in the city.
The proximity of the city to the mountain is why Nyiragongo has been
declared a Decade Volcano. These are 16 volcanoes identified by the
International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's
Interior (IAVCEI) as being worthy of particular study in light of their
history of large, destructive eruptions and proximity to populated
areas. Essentially, it's a list of the most dangerous volcanoes on the
planet.
The greater danger lurks under the water of Lake Kivu. Goma sprawls out
along the northern shore of the lake and deep in its depths is a massive
amount of carbon dioxide that is slowly building thanks to the volcano.
Think of it like a pop bottle with the top on. Open it up and a bit of
gas may fizz up. Now, shake that bottle and pop the top. The resulting
eruption of gas and liquid will end up soaking the room and you.
Lake Kivu is similar, only on a far more vast scale. The weight of the
water above the gas-saturated deep layers acts as a top, keeping the gas
in solution. However, if the concentration of carbon dioxide builds to a
critical level, it could all come out of the lake at once.
This isn't likely to happen any time soon as the concentration is still
too low. The danger is disturbance. If the volcano erupts and lava makes
it to the lake, an eruption of the gas, known as a limnic eruption,
could take place. That eruption would spill titanic amounts of carbon dioxide into the areas around the lake and potentially kill hundreds of thousands of people.
WATCH: Top 5 most dangerous volcanoes in the world.
It is an eerie feeling to see these pictures of the Nyiragongo crater
and realize that I was standing on a volcano that was mere moments from
stirring to life. And a terrifying feeling that I may end up returning
to a city that is slowly being engulfed in a new eruption of burning,
liquid rock. - The Weather Network.
April 11, 2016 - ALASKA - After a period of heavy rains, about 200 million metric tons of rock
tumbled down a remote Southeast Alaska mountain. The massive landslide,
lasting about 60 seconds, occurred on October 17, 2015, and landed on
the toe of Tyndall Glacier and into Taan Fiord in Icy Bay, Alaska.
The event generated a local megatsunami that sheared trees more
than 152.4 meters (500 feet) up on a peninsula within the fiord. It was
big enough to register at the nearest tidal gauge 155 km (96.3 miles)
away. For comparison, the 2011 tsunami in Japan reached about 39.6
meters (130 feet) above sea level.
This event, now estimated as the biggest nonvolcanic landslide, by volume, in North America's written history, was registered
by special seismograms monitored by the Global CMT Project at
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory whose seismologists Göran Ekström and
Colin Stark have invented a new technique that uses seismic waves to
detect landslides in remote areas where they might otherwise go
unrecorded.
Since winter snows hid the damage generated by the tsunami it
took several months to see the extent of the damage. Upon hearing a
report from a pilot colleague that the landslide area of Icy Bay was
free of snow, glaciologist Chris Larsen of the University of Alaska
Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute flew there in his Cessna 180. Larsen
used a camera system mounted in his plane to make a high-resolution map
of the landslide and the path of the megatsunami.
"It almost blows away everything in the historical record except for Lituya Bay," Larsen said. "It's really a unique event to have a tsunami 100 meters (328 feet) high.If it was September or any time in the summer, the wave could have gotten a fishing boat or two.
"The
Lituya Bay landslide, Larsen referred to, occurred in 1958 after a
powerful M8.0 earthquake. The wave that followed ripped spruce from 518 m
(1 700 feet) up a mountain slope and left trimlines in the bay that are
visible today.
Icy Bay and places like it will have more landslides as time goes on,
Larsen said. Warmer temperatures melt more glacial ice that buttress
hillsides. When the ice melts, oversteepened slopes will fail. Sometimes
it takes a big rain or an earthquake to shake them down.
"These megatsunamis are infrequent in the historical record but will most likely increase," Larsen added. - The Watchers.
