Landslide buries 300 dozens of houses in south Mexicolink

Some 300 houses have been buried by a landslide in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, local officials have said.

Heavy rain overnight had saturated the soil on a mountainside above the town of Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec, causing it to slip at about 0400 (0900 GMT).
It is not clear how many people have been affected, but officials fear that hundreds could have been buried.
Rescue teams have reportedly been delayed because of the bad weather, which has cut off several roads.
Tropical storms in the western Caribbean have caused high rainfall in the mountainous region during the past week.

 

Is Iceland Preparing To Blow Again?

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It has been a while since Iceland's unpronounceable volcano shut down European airspace for a week. This could be about to change, because as FromTheOld demonstrates, the seismic activity at the base of Bárðarbunga stratovolcano, which also happens to be the highest mountain in Iceland, has picked up materially over the last 48 hours. As a reminder (courtesy of Wikipedia), Bárðarbunga “The largest lava flow in Iceland and the entire earth from a single eruption is originated from Bárðarbunga about 8500 years ago (causing mass extinctions)." Have we come down to this? A supervolcano demanding the sacrifice of a former FRBNY demagogue and current Napoleon Dynamite Ph.D. lookalike or threatening another, much more vicious, lock out of Europe?
More on FromTheOld:

Bárðarbunga is a powerful stratovolcano in Iceland and is located under the ice cap of Vatnajökull glacier. With a massive high of 6591 feet above sea level that makes it the highest mountain in Iceland it also makes for some powerful volanic activity when it erupts.

Iceland's Bárðarbunga volcano is said to erupt every 250-600 years if scientists are correct. What many dont know is that the most powerful volcano eruption on earth happened at Bárðarbunga some time ago.

For those that believe in evolution it could be around 8000 years ago but for those that believe in creation it could be around 3000 years ago, no one knows exactly when but the last time Bárðarbunga erupted it caused lava to cover an area of 950 square kilometers.

It is believed that Bárðarbunga will erupt sometime in the near future.

In the picture above you can see the activity rising in the last couple of days.

Jakarta. Following increased volcanic activity of Central Java’s Mount Merapi, the chief of the national park that surrounds it said on Sunday that routes to the summit had been closed.

The volcano, which also extends into Yogyakarta province, has displayed a significant increase in seismic activity over the past week, with multiphase earthquakes increasing from a normal average of five times per day to 38 times per day.

Volcanic earthquakes are also up from the normal average of once per day to 11 per day.

“I ordered my officers at guard posts at the foot of Mount Merapi to ban climbers from coming into the park. I shall issue a formal ban myself on Monday,” Tri Prasetyo, chief of Mount Merapi National Park, told the Jakarta Globe on Sunday.

Tri said the alert status had been increased on Friday from “normal” to “beware” by the Volcano Investigation and Technology Development Institution (BPPTK).

“Shortly after the authorities raised the alert status and issued the latest report on Mount Merapi’s activities, I stopped issuing permits for climbers,” Tri said. “Landslides and mudflows of volcanic material [remaining from previous eruptions] could easily kill someone.”

Three sand miners were killed and two others seriously injured on the volcano on Saturday morning after a landslide buried them at an illegal sand mining site near Balerante village, Klaten, Central Java.

“We are still investigating the cause of the landslide, but we have banned sand mining activities on the slopes of Mount Merapi. We suspect a landslide due to heavy rain,” said Adj. Comr. Agus Djaka Santosa, the Klaten Police chief.

On Friday, Sri Sumarti, Mount Merapi section head at BPPTK in Yogyakarta, said the status was raised to beware, just three rungs below full eruption status.

“We are appealing mainly to sand miners operating within sever kilometers of the crater,” she said.

“The rainfall is high enough to cause flash floods of [old] volcanic material that are very dangerous.”

Sri warned that material could be washed down the volcano’s slopes by heavy rain.

Agus urged people not to disturb wild animals descending following volcanic activity.

Apes and green peafowl were reported to have started to come down the mountain.
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