There were warning signs ahead of Sri Lanka mudslide: survivors

Yahoo – AFP, October 31, 2014

There were warning signs ahead of Sri Lanka mudslide: survivors

Koslanda (Sri Lanka) (AFP) - Sniffer dogs were deployed Friday to search for mudslide victims in Sri Lanka as survivors said they had seen warning signs of the disaster, such as cracks in the ground and livestock fleeing.

An estimated 100 people are still listed as missing, according to the national Disaster Management Centre (DMC), two days after dozens of tin-roofed homes were buried under tonnes of mud at the Meeriyabedda tea estate, 200 kilometres (125 miles) east of the capital.

Military officers supervising the massive rescue operation said only a handful of bodies had been found and there was scant hope of finding anyone alive.

Survivors have recounted how drinking water streams turned muddy, cracks appeared in the ground and cattle and goats started running down the mountain slope just before tragedy struck.

"I shouted to our parents to hurry... I saw my mother close the front door and at that moment, a huge mound of earth crashed onto our house, Gajani Ravichandra, 14, told AFP.

"It all happened right in front of our eyes. All I could do was scream and scream," she said at a temporary shelter. Her parents perished but her grandparents and brother survived.

Gajani's brother Suresh Kumar, 12, said he saw an unusual sight of cattle and goats running down a slope just before the landslide.

A six-year-old girl was lost in the mudslide as she walked to school with her older brother who narrowly escaped, officials said, adding around 85 students were among 227 people who escaped the mudslide.

Some people lost entire families. One driver recounted how his wife, two sons, daughter-in-law and a six-month-old baby girl had been swallowed by the mud.

Shanthi Selvadurai, 23, said she was trying to flee the mudslide when she suddenly found herself buried to the neck.

"My mother managed to get to safety. She came back with two men who dug me out," Selvadurai said, nursing a leg injury.

Textile store worker Vijaya Kantha, 23, said he saw danger signs of unstable ground and rushed back to collect his identity card from home.

But just before he reached his dwelling, he heard a loud noise and saw his house swallowed by mud.

The region's top military officer, Major General Mano Perera, who is supervising the recovery efforts, said sniffer dogs had indicated several sites where people might be buried.

"In some places, we will have to dig 20-to-30 feet (six-to-nine meters) to remove the new layer of soil," Perera told AFP.

"Rains and soggy conditions are impeding our progress, but we will keep this recovery effort going," he said.

Several countries, including India and the United States, have offered help.

More than 1,200 people living in neighbouring tea plantations, have sheltered in two schools fearing more mudslides in the picturesque, but geographically unstable tea-growing mountain region, officials said.

Sri Lanka, a tropical island at the foot of India, is prone to weather-related disasters -- especially during the monsoon season when the rains are often welcomed by farmers.

If the death toll does reach three figures, the disaster would be the country's worst since the December 2004 tsunami when 31,000 people died.

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Kryon Q&A

Question (2002): Dear Kryon, A friend and I are meditating on the recent shark attacks and feel that it has to do with the planetary changes. We just can’t understand why they have become aggressive. What is the message the sharks are bringing? Why is this happening?
—Thank you,
Maryann

Answer: Indeed there are changes with the environment and also with biology regarding the 12-year grid change. I will first give you what was happening in general: What you are seeing are mammals, amphibians, insects, and even fish that are in areas that are new to them. Every life-form that migrates is effected by magnetics. All life forms that follows certain feeding scenarios and are “following the food” have the potential to be affected. This is due to the changing of the magnetic ley lines of the earth as we have stated before.

The areas where you can see in the ocean most clearly are within those migration patterns closest to the land. Where the ocean interfaces with the land, there are challenges for all these creatures for at least one of their generations. Whales will beach themselves by following old magnetics headings that now “drive” them into peninsula’s and other land areas that were marginally on the edge of their old paths. Birds, amphibians, and insects will be seen to do odd things for awhile.

So these shark fish may be in greater numbers in these coastal areas than in the past, but the increased aggressive behavior was actually something else: There was a tremendous “release” of energy due to the Sept. 11 event. Much like the energy of earthquakes and other earth movement, much of the environment “feels it” coming. We have spoken about how the Sept. 11 event was not a surprise to the earth. [See Lee’s article “Did Kryon give us hints”] So, some of the new actions of these fish were due to an actual energy buildup of coming events... of which you now understand.

If you are paying attention, therefore, you might ask, “Does this mean that Human consciousness issues affect the actual earth?” Yes they do! Finally you may begin to see how global consciousness is tied into the environment, and even to basic physics and reality. They are not separate, and never were. The indigenous knew it, and now the “modern” world is beginning to wonder.

Blessed is the Human Being who understands that what they think, do, and intend, actually drives the reality of the dirt of the planet!

Hawaii braces for rare storms

Residents of Hawaii are bracing for a second rare tropical storm after power was knocked out to thousands of homes on Big Island. Hurricanes have hit the US' Pacific island group only three times since 1950.

Deutsche Welle, 9 Aug 2014

The US National Weather Service urged Hawaiian residents to "keep on guard" in case Hurricane Julio changed direction. On Saturday, it was cruising about 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) east of the state's biggest island.

Julio was packing winds of 100 miles per hour (160 kilometers per hour). Meteorologists said if it stayed on its route unchanged, it would weaken and lie about 300 kilometers north of the island chain on Sunday, local time.

On Friday, tropical storm Iselle - the first to hit the state in 22 years - downed trees, caused flooding and knocked out power to 21,000 homes, mainly on Big Island. Airlines canceled about 50 flights. Stores and schools were closed. No major injuries were reported.

Rain at least

After Iselle swept by, a tropical storm warning was kept in place for the island of Kauai, but canceled for Big Island, Oahu and Maui. Meteologists warned, however, that Julio could still bring a considerable amount of rain.

"Right now our guidance is indicating it's going to go north (of the state), but that can change and folks need to keep on guard," said weather service spokesman Mike Cantin.

Risky surfing

Lifeguards said a few surfers were braving waves at a Honolulu spot nicknamed "Suicides." Lifeguards on Oahu planned to respond only to emergency calls.

Meteorologist Anthony Reynes said waves on Hawaii's north- and east-facing shores could be between 3 and 4 meters (10 and 15 feet) high.

Storm damage prompted electoral officials to postponed voting for about 8,000 voters in Saturday's primary races to choose Democrat congressional and gubernatorial candidates for elections in November. Voting elsewhere in Hawaii would proceed, they said.

Chief election officer Scott Nago said the two precincts affected would vote later.

Japan bracing for typhoon

Southwest Japan was also bracing for a typhoon on Saturday, with more than 100,000 residents being advised to evacuate their homes.

Typhoon Halong has already brought disruption to outer areas, forcing the cancelations of hundreds of flights and stranding many summer vacation passengers.

The typhoon was projected to make landfall on the southwest island of Shikoku late Saturday. It was lashed by downpours last weekend.

Officials have warned that Halong could trigger landslides and flooding.

Ipj/tj (Reuters, AP)

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"Recalibration of Knowledge" – Jan 14, 2012 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Channelling, God-Creator, Benevolent Design, New Energy, Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Reincarnation, Gaia, Old Energies (Africa,Terrorists, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela ... ), Weather, Rejuvenation, Akash, Nicolas Tesla / Einstein, Cold Fusion, Magnetics, Lemuria, Atomic Structure (Electrons, Particles, Polarity, Self Balancing, Magnetism, Higgs Boson), Entanglement, "Life is necessary for a Universe to exist and not the other way around", DNA, Humans (Baby getting ready, First Breath, Stem Cells, Embryonic Stem Cells, Rejuvenation), Global Unity, ... etc.) - (Text Version)

"...The Weather... Again

My partner has been "against the grain" in the past years, giving you what I have channelled about the weather. Is it global warming? No. Is it going to get better? No. This is a two-generation cycle. There will continue to be earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and storms. This is a recalibration of life in the ocean, and humanity must go through this in any way they can. This is a cycle, a known and expected one, but since you haven't gone through it in modern times, it's not well understood yet. ..."

Sea Port in Brazil falls into the sea

All Voices, Brazil | Nov 05, 2010

Dramatic video footage has emerged showing the moment a sinkhole / landslide ripped through the Amazonian port of Chibatão, Manaus, Brazil.

The security camera footage shows the torrential flows of mud that swept through the riverside container terminal in the late morning of Sunday 17 October as maintenance work was being carried out.

Two port workers – 31-year-old Pedro Paulo, and 63-year-old Sílvio Barbosa Silva – were confirmed as missing. However, Carlos Gonzaga, president of Sindicargas, the local stevedores union, said he believed at least 10 people could had been swept to their deaths.

A 300-metre crack occurred along the length of the privately owned river terminal as large areas of the terminal patio gave way and crumbled into the river during the disaster, with containers, chassis and port equipment also swept away.José Ferreira de Oliveira, owner of the port, told local journalists that maintenance work was being carried out to create an embankment when the landslide occurred.

It is understood that the work was intended to facilitate access to a floating pontoon, that served as a berth at the facility, after river levels dropped.The river is at its lowest level since records began in 1902, following the Amazon’s worst drought in decades.

According to the government’s geological service, the Rio Negro was measured at a depth of 13.63 metres, down from a high of nearly 30 metres last year.Derricks and rafts have been used to recover containers and cargo handling equipment as the cleanup operation progresses and the search for bodies continues.

The area of the port affected measures 400 by 200 metres, totalling around 80,000 sq metres. Further large cracks are understood to have occurred in an area of pavement adjacent to the first landslide.

The port of the Chibatão is responsible for about 40% of cargo movements to and from the industrial centre around the city of Manaus, the Amazonian state capital.

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Many Sinkhole Pictures from Around the World

1,000 people could be trapped in Mexico landslide, governor says

CNN, By the CNN Wire Staff, September 28, 2010 11:05 a.m. EDT

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Rescue officials had yet to arrive, some residents complained
• The mudslide could have fallen atop up to 300 homes, Gov. Ulises Ruiz said

For more on this story, go to CNN Mexico

Mexico City, Mexico (CNN) -- Up to 1,000 people may have been trapped by a landslide in the southwestern Mexico state of Oaxaca, Gov. Ulises Ruiz said Tuesday morning.

A hill about 650 feet wide (200 meters) collapsed early Tuesday, sending tons of mud over as many as 300 houses, Ruiz told CNN affiliate Televisa.

Rescue officials, heavy machinery and police and military authorities were on their way to the scene, Ruiz said.

"We expect to get there in time to rescue these people," he said.

Ruiz said several rivers have overflowed their banks due to heavy rain in the area and many roads are blocked by landslides, making it difficult for rescuers to reach the affected areas.

Some residents were complaining Tuesday morning that help was slow in coming.

"Police and rescue officials still have not arrived at the landslide zone and there are many landslides on the road," one person posted on the Twitter internet blogging site.

The region has been plagued by extremely heavy rainfall over the past two weeks, most recently by the remnants of Tropical Storm Matthew, which are still stalled over the area Tuesday, according to CNN Meteorologist Brandon Miller.

Satellite data indicates that 300 mm (11.8 inches) of rain has fallen in the area of the landslide in the past three days, Miller said.

Many houses are built on the edge of ridges on the steep terrain in the state, which stands 2,000 feet above sea level, making it conducive to landslides in severe weather.

More rain is forecast in the region in the next day and a half, Miller said.

The severe weather led civil protection authorities to declare a state of emergency Monday for the Oaxaca state municipalities of Oaxaca de Juarez, San Felipe Tejalapam, San Jacinto Amilpas, San Lorenzo Cacaotepec, San Pablo Etla, Santa Lucia del Camino and Tlalixtac de Cabrera. A municipality in Mexico is a geographic division within a state, similar to a county in the United States.

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China: cracks in the Three Gorges Dam, so 300,000 people can wave goodbye to their homes

Tim Collard is a retired British diplomat who spent most of his career in China and Germany. He is an active member of the Labour Party.

Telegraph.co.uk, By Tim Collard World Last updated: June 7th, 2010

In China, cracks are appearing – in the neighbourhood of the massive Three Gorges Dam, the country’s great prestige project, and also in the Great Internet Firewall of China, enabling the ominous news to leak out. Three years ago stories were already emerging in the Chinese media about landslides, ecological deterioration and accumulation of algae further down the river. And less and less effort seems to be made to plug the leaks.

Recent media reports tell of a series of landslips, minor earthquakes and cracks appearing in roads and buildings along the central section of the Yangtse, between the dam and the city of Chongqing. Almost 10,000 “dangerous sites” have been identified, but many of the people living near them cannot be relocated for lack of money. Two years ago thousands of children died in Sichuan Province because their schools were not resistant to the earthquake which hit the area; in the town of Badong near Chongqing children are attending school in buildings which have been recognised as far more vulnerable. What else can they do? The local authorities can’t afford a new one.

Like many such megaprojects, the Three Gorges was always driven as much by politics as by economics. Its rationale covered irrigation and flood control in the lower Yangtse plain, hydroelectric power generation, which sounds sensible: but objections were bulldozed in the tense political atmosphere of the late 1980s, when the final decisions were made. The dam was the pet project of then prime minister Li Peng, who was involved in the party split which led to the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, in which he was the triumphant prime mover. In this context he was not going to back down on the dam, and the debate was closed down.

So the construction was forced through without even what passes in China for proper debate. The number of local people who had to be relocated came to 1.4 million – equivalent to the obliteration of Birmingham. Now it looks like another 300,000 will have to be shifted – add Coventry to that. This, in China, means getting a few weeks’ notice to quit and putting up with wherever the authorities see fit to put you. On top of that a large number of historic sites from one of the most ancient cradles of Chinese civilisation had to go. Yes, China has vast numbers of people to feed and cannot afford sentimentality, but perhaps a bit more care might have been taken to ensure that the costs and benefits had been properly calculated.

But even three years ago, with Li Peng and his family safely out of the way, official Chinese sources were admitting that things had gone horribly wrong. In the official media references were made to landslides, ecological deterioration and accumulation of algae. The Chinese aren’t unworldly and irresponsible greenies. When they point things like this out it’s because it’s causing real damage. Of course the authorities are careful not to promote mass panic, but so far the incidents are far enough apart to prevent collective protest; local complaints can still be suppressed without too much trouble.

Meanwhile, at the centre, it would appear that there is no great enthusiasm to see this all hushed up. The current supremo Hu Jintao has always taken care not to associate himself with the project. Hu’s faction of the Communist Party is broadly opposed by the “princelings’ faction” – i.e. the rich-kid offspring of the post-Mao leadership – and appears disinclined to pull Li Peng’s chestnuts out of the fire.

Wall of water could engulf Shangri-La

A landslide has dammed Pakistan's Hunza River, creating a vast lake which now threatens 45,000 people downstream

The Independent, by Rina Saeed Khan, Sunday, 4 April 2010

Pakistani bearers carrying goods from China that were ferried across the new lake last week. Engineers fear the natural dam formed by a huge landslide may break (AP)

A seven-mile lake formed by a massive landslide in north-east Pakistan is threatening to burst its banks and sweep through a valley, wiping out villages and endangering 45,000 people who live downstream.

Engineers are racing to build a channel at the top of the natural dam, formed by a landslide in early January which killed 19 people and blocked the Hunza River. This would let the water drain from the lake gradually. But they do not have much time. The water, which only a week or so ago was rising at a rate of 45cm a day, is now going up by a daily 30cm. Its growth is sure to accelerate as glaciers and snow caps in the nearby mountains start to melt.

The swelling waters of this huge lake – about as long as Ullswater, the Lake District's second-largest body of water – are now just 30 metres from the top.

Professor David Petley, of the International Landslide Centre at Durham University, warns there is "substantive risk of an outburst" as the water level approaches the top of the dam, with "the potential for a large flood wave to travel downstream as far as Tarbela Dam", 50km northwest of Islamabad.

He says: "When the water reaches the top there are two scenarios. One, water goes into the channel that the army are cutting and there's no flood. It sounds like an attractive prospect but you have a huge body of water behind a landslide dam. Two, if the water goes, it would be caught by the Tarbela dam downstream – and the reservoir there is low because of the drought in Pakistan – but as many as 45,000 people are in danger of a flood wave. A wave could be 40 metres high, or even more, as it goes down the valley."

The dammed river, from which the lake has formed, runs through the fertile Hunza Valley, the former mountain kingdom renowned as the fabled Shangri-La, and feeds into the mighty Indus river on which the Tarbela dam lies. The expanding lake has already displaced more than 1,600 people in surrounding villages and the waters are encroaching on several more villages.

People now watch helplessly as the waters rise. Shah Makeen, a fruit seller from Shiskat, a village a few kilometres east of the landslide, closer to the Chinese border, said at the end of March, when I visited the area, that his home is slowly being engulfed by the massive lake.

At that point, the waters were lapping at the village of Gulmit, and had already flooded the orchards of tourist hotels located near the river. Makeen said: "I would say that in another two weeks most of Ayeenabad will be flooded. The water has even reached Gulmit now. People are very upset."

Focus Humanitarian Assistance, a charity affiliated with the Aga Khan Development Network, is setting up an early-warning system to alert villagers downstream in case the dam shows signs of collapse. They have built a monitoring camp above the lake to check for cracks and have installed CCTV and night lights to monitor seepage or any unusual activity in the dam.

Professor Petley says more needs to be done. In his report he writes: "While constructing the spillway is undoubtedly an appropriate first step, a great deal more work is urgently required in terms of management of the hazard... The downstream communities are facing a risk that is not tolerable – immediate action is required at a national level to protect the population between Attabad and Tarbela Dam."

But for people such as Afsar Jan from Shiskat, who is watching the waters submerge his home, the authorities have done too little too late. "They should have done more sooner," he says. "Our future is being destroyed in front of our very eyes."

The villagers, mostly Ismaili Muslims whose spiritual leader is the Aga Khan, are losing their homes, orchards and fields as the waters rise. And the lake has not only taken people's land away, it has also cut off the 25,000 population living in the Gojal region of Hunza from the rest of the country and severed a vital trading route with China.

Submerged beneath the icy water is a vital 10km stretch of the famous Karakoram Highway (KKH), the highest road in the world which snakes through the mountain ranges of the Hindu Kush, the Karakorams and the Himalayas, linking China and Pakistan. The route is not expected to reopen for months.

Professor Petley says: "The 25,000 or so people on the north side of the blockage are stranded. They have no access to the road but for the rickety old boats that are taking them across the lake to the dam. Without them, they'd be cut off from the outside world. There is a serious problem supplying them with food and medicine. People on the north side of the barrier are suffering badly. The boats are totally inadequate. There does need to be some more assistance."

The only way for people to get to the KKH from upstream of the landslide is a one-hour journey across the lake by boat and then over the 1.5km landslide on foot. The journey takes a whole day as there are not many boats and they operate only in daylight. The people complain there are insufficient boats, although the army plans to start operating large rafts which can transport more goods and even small jeeps. There are no food shortages but people are relying on aid.

Bibi Shawar, who is currently living in a makeshift camp in Ayeenabad, said: "In the beginning there were only around two boats. I know of a woman and her new-born baby who both died because there was no boat to take them to a hospital in time.

"In the Punjab [a southern state in Pakistan], a woman delivered a baby in a rickshaw and the media made such a fuss that she was compensated 500,000 rupees (£7,350). Here, even the boats they give us are leaky and unsafe."

More than 100,000 cubic metres of debris have already been moved by the bulldozers but a further 112,500 cubic metres still need to be lifted. At the site of the landslide, four large diggers, borrowed from the Chinese contractors who were working on widening the Karakoram Highway, are lifting clay, rocks and soil from the landslide to build the spillway channel. The work is being carried out by engineers from the Frontier Works Organisation, which built and maintains the Karakoram Highway.

Farooq Ahmad Khan, a retired major general who chairs Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority, said: "The landslide occurred on 4 January this year and on 5 January I was at the site along with my team. We led the rescue operation in the area. To date, the Pakistani army has flown 635 helicopter sorties to the affected area, dropping off 153 tons of food items and 438 cartons of medicines."

In his view, the work to open the spillway is on track, given the scale of the landslide, and it should be completed by 15 April unless the boulders are so big they require blasting. "In the beginning it was very tricky work. We first had to make an access path for the bulldozers over all the slush, which took time," he said.

Professor Petley says: "I haven't seen plans to move people. The Focus organisation has drafted plans for as far down the river as Gilgit, which is where the Hunza becomes the Indus. But there's nothing planned beyond that. The government could have plans in place: I desperately hope that there are plans for the evacuation. If there aren't, that's worrying. Despite the World Bank endorsing my plan for the area, there's been no feedback from the Pakistan government. We're trying not to make them feel that we're backing them into a corner."