Limnic eruptions

The following natural disaster is uncommon, rare in nature and is more often seen as a silent killer because unless it's investigated and observed intently, no one will know that it's occurring. Living things unknowingly inhale the gas through their breathing patterns and end their lives through that.


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 A limnic eruption, also referred to as a lake overturn, is a rare type of natural disaster in which carbon dioxide (CO₂) suddenly erupts from deep lake water, suffocating wildlife, livestock and humans. Such an eruption may also cause tsunamis in the lake as the rising CO₂ displaces water. Scientists believe landslides, volcanic activity, or explosions can trigger such an eruption. Lakes in which such activity occurs may be known as limnically active lakes or exploding lakes. Some features of limnically active lakes include:

• CO₂-saturated incoming water
• A cool lake bottom indicating an absence of direct volcanic interaction with lake waters
• An upper and lower thermal layer with differing CO₂ saturations
• Proximity to areas with volcanic activity

Scientists have recently determined, from investigations into the mass casualties in the 1980s at Lake Monoun and Lake Nyos, that limnic eruptions and volcanic eruptions, although indirectly related, are actually separate types of disaster events.

To date, this phenomenon has been observed only twice. The first was in Cameroon at Lake Monoun in 1984, causing the asphyxiation and death of 37 people living nearby. A second, deadlier eruption happened at neighbouring Lake Nyos in 1986, this time releasing over 80 million cubic meters of CO₂ and killing between 1,700 and 1,800 people, again by asphyxiation. Due to the nature of the event, it is hard to determine if limnic eruptions have happened elsewhere. However, a third lake — Lake Kivu — containing massive amounts of dissolved CO₂ exists on the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. Sample sediments from the lake were taken by Professor Robert Hecky from the University of Michigan which showed that an event caused living creatures in the lake to go extinct approximately every thousand years, and caused nearby vegetation to be swept back into the lake.

References:

Sigurdsson, H., Devine, J.D., Tchua, F.M., Presser, F.M., & Pringle, M.K.W. (1987). Origin of the lethal gas burst from Lake Monoun, Cameroun. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 31(1-2), Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VCS-48BCK0F-W&_user=10&_coverDate=03%2F31%2F1987&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=57f1d2012ffbe3e963e37cf81b1598dd&searchtype=a doi: 10.1016/0377-0273(87)90002-3 

Kling, G.W., Clark, M.A., Wagner, G.N., Compton, H.R., & Humphrey, A.M. (1987). The 1986 Lake Nyos gas disaster in Cameroon, West Africa. Science , 236(4798), Retrieved from http://www.sciencemag.org/content/236/4798/169 doi: 10.1126/science.236.4798.169 

Wellington Avalanche

During the early morning hours of March 1, 1910,  an avalanche roars down Windy Mountain near Stevens Pass in the Cascade Mountains, taking with it two Great Northern trains and 96 victims. This is one of the worst train disasters in U.S. history and the worst natural disaster (with the greatest number of fatalities) in Washington.

On February 23, 1910, after a snow delay at the east Cascade Mountains town of Leavenworth, two Great Northern trains, the Spokane Local passenger train No. 25 and Fast Mail train No. 27, proceeded westbound towards Puget Sound. There were five or six steam and electric engines, 15 boxcars, passenger cars, and sleepers.

The trains had passed through the Cascade Tunnel from the east to the west side of the mountains, when snow and avalanches forced them to stop near Wellington, in King County. Wellington was a small town populated almost entirely with Great Northern railway employees.

The train stopped under the peak of Windy Mountain, above Tye Creek. Heavy snowfall and avalanches made it impossible for train crews to clear the tracks. For six days, the trains waited in blizzard and avalanche conditions. On February 26, the telegraph lines went down and communication with the outside was lost. On the last day of February, the weather turned to rain with thunder and lightning. Thunder shook the snow-laden Cascade Mountains alive with avalanches. Then it happened.

Ninety-six people were killed, including 35 passengers, 58 Great Northern employees on the trains, and three railroad employees in the depot. Twenty-three passengers survived; they were pulled from the wreckage by railroad employees who immediately rushed from the hotel and other buildings where they had been staying. The work was soon abandoned; it was not until 21 weeks later, in late July, that it was possible for the last of the bodies to be retrieved.

The immediate cause of the avalanche was the rain and thunder. But, conditions had been set by the clear cutting of timber and by forest fires caused by steam locomotive sparks, which opened up the slopes above the tracks and created an ideal environment for slides to occur.

My personal view on the matter: Had the clearing of wood and forest fires not happened, this incident would have been chalked up as a normal disaster, much like an earthquake. However, mankind has yet again played a part in causing this to happen, which is not surprising at this point as humans have over the years, destroyed Earth's natural resources in favor of development or self-productivity. Not that it's wrong per se but such disasters could have been mostly prevented if there weren't excess destruction.

References:

Lange, G. (2003, January 26). Train disaster at wellington kills 96 on march 1, 1910. Retrieved from http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=5127

Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast with devastating force at daybreak on Aug. 29, 2005, pummeling a region that included the fabled city of New Orleans and heaping damage on neighboring Mississippi. In all, more than 1,700 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of others displaced.

Packing 145-mile-an-hour winds as it made landfall, the category 3 storm left more than a million people in three states without power and submerged highways even hundreds of miles from its center. The hurricane's storm surge — a 29-foot wall of water pushed ashore when the hurricane struck the Gulf Coast — was the highest ever measured in the United States. Levees failed in New Orleans, resulting in political and social upheavals that continued a half decade later.

Katrina ranks as one of the most punishing hurricanes ever to hit the United States. Damage, costing billions of dollars, has made it one of the costliest storms on record. In New Orleans, floodwaters from the breached levee rose to rooftops in the poorest neighborhood, and in many areas residents were rescued from roofs of homes that became uninhabitable. The hurricane's howling winds stripped 15-foot sections off the roof of the Superdome, where as many as 10,000 evacuees had taken shelter. An exodus of hundreds of thousands left the city, many becoming refugees, finding shelter with nearby relatives or restarting their lives in states as far away as Massachusetts and Utah.

The response from Singapore was swift, with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong writing a letter to then-President George W. Bush, offering help to the devastated areas. As a result, four helicopters were sent to help the Texas Army National Guard.

However, the hurricane protection failures in New Orleans prompted a lawsuit against the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the builders of the levee system as mandated in the Flood Control Act of 1965. Responsibility for the failures and flooding was laid squarely on the Army Corps in January 2008, but the federal agency could not be held financially liable due to sovereign immunity in the Flood Control Act of 1928. There was also an investigation of the responses from federal, state and local governments, resulting in the resignation of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director Michael D. Brown, and of New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) Superintendent Eddie Compass. In addition, controversy surrounded the relief efforts and the US government was heavily criticized for mismanagement and lack of leadership.


My personal view on the matter: When chaos strikes, humans tend to panic and scatter. Paranoia will hit and the government will be accused of inefficiency and inability to act in dire situations. This became highly evident in the Hurricane Katrina situation as crime rates increased along with more accusations of racism. I feel that people should try to remain calm instead of become hysteric. Yes, lives are lost, including their loved ones but pushing blame around won't help anyone out or fix any problems. They need to understand that authorities are always doing the best they can.

References:

Hurricane katrina. (2010, August 25). Retrieved from http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/hurricane_katrina/index.html 

Hurricane katrina - wikipedia. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina

 Singaporean response to hurricane katrina. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singaporean_response_to_Hurricane_Katrina

Mount Merapi

Mount Merapi, Gunung Merapi (literally Fire Mountain in Indonesian/Javanese), is an active stratovolcano located on the border between Central Java and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. It is the most active volcano in Indonesia and has erupted regularly since 1548. It is located approximately 28 kilometres (17 mi) north of Yogyakarta city, and thousands of people live on the flanks of the volcano, with villages as high as 1,700 metres (5,600 ft) above sea level.
The name Merapi could be loosely translated as 'Mountain of Fire'. The etymology of the name came from Meru-Api; from the Javanese combined words; Meru means "mountain" refer to mythical mountain of Gods in Hinduism, and api means "fire". Smoke can be seen emerging from the mountaintop at least 300 days a year, and several eruptions have caused fatalities. Hot gas from a large explosion killed 27 people on November 22 in 1994, mostly in the town of Muntilan, west of the volcano. Another large eruption occurred in 2006, shortly before the Yogyakarta earthquake. In light of the hazards that Merapi poses to populated areas, it has been designated as one of the Decade Volcanoes.
On 25 October 2010 the Indonesian government raised the alert for Mount Merapi to its highest level and warned villagers in threatened areas to move to safer ground. People living within a 20 km (12.5 mile) zone were told to evacuate. Officials said about 500 volcanic earthquakes had been recorded on the mountain over the weekend of 23–24 October, and that the magma had risen to about 1 kilometre (3,300 ft) below the surface due to the seismic activity. On the afternoon of 25 October 2010 Mount Merapi erupted lava from its southern and southeastern slopes.

The eruptions killed at least 18 people a day after the first eruption and reached 273 recently. One of the victims was the village elder, who was also the volcano's spiritual gatekeeper.

It was a tragedy that shocked the entire world especially since an earthquake, which triggered a tsunami, occurred on the same day as Mount Merapi's first eruption and claimed over 500 lives.

An unfortunate event that struck Indonesia and despite the government issuing warnings and alerts did not reach the affected areas in time. In the case of Mount Merapi, the later deceased volcano gatekeeper had refused to leave his home, believing that the volcano would not erupt and villagers had listened to him. In the case of the earthquake in Sumatra, the warnings that the officials had sent out did not reach the village of Mentawai in time.

My personal view on the matter: It truly was a disaster indeed with two tragedies hitting the same country at the same time. However, I feel that the high death toll could have been avoided had the Indonesians had listened to the warnings, especially in regards to the explosion of Mount Merapi, and not take to heart the words of their gatekeeper, who eventually lost his life to the mountain.

References:
2010 eruptions of mount merapi. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_eruptions_of_Mount_Merapi
October 2010 sumatra earthquake and tsunami. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2010_Sumatra_earthquake_and_tsunami
Malik, C. (2010, October 27). Yogyakarta palace claims premonition of mbah maridjan’s death. Retrieved from http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/yogyakarta-palace-claims-premonition-of-mbah-maridjans-death/403500