Hazard Roundup--November 2007

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Dave Hebert

Hello there—I'm Dave Hebert, and you are listening to CoreCast episode 21, the Hazards Roundup for November 2007.

We've got a fair bit to cover here, so let's jump right in.

Wildfires, of course, were the big news through the end of October and into November in Southern California. As of November 1st, more than 500,000 acres had burned, 14 people had been killed, and more than 1,800 homes had been destroyed in the big fires near San Diego and Los Angeles.

Then toward the end of the month, another fire burned more than 4,500 acres and destroyed more than 50 homes in Malibu. So a pretty rough go of it out west, in November.

Moving on to volcanoes that the USGS monitors, the most exciting activity was the Thanksgiving eve lava flow changes in the eruption at Kilauea in Hawaii.

Anatahan Volcano in the Northern Mariana Islands has gone back up to an Aviation Code Yellow, and Mount St. Helens continues to do what it does, which is growing that lava dome.

And in Yellowstone, we've seen some relatively rapid rise of the caldera there, which is being credited to a recharge of magma into the giant magma chamber that underlies the Yellowstone Caldera.

As far as flooding and landslides go, things were pretty quiet in the U.S., but there was some bad news in other parts of the world.

Tropical Storm/Hurricane Noel caused a lot of problems in the Caribbean, where it lead to the deaths of more than 100 people in the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

In Vietnam, flooding killed 70 people and destroyed 15,000 homes and hundreds of acres of crops, while in southern Mexico, over 80 percent of the Tabasco state was under water and landslides and floods killed more than 20, destroyed property and crops, and left more than a half-million people homeless.

Finally, we did see some pretty significant earthquakes in November. There was a magnitude-7.7 earthquake in Chile on the 14^th that lead to 2 deaths, though it did occur in fairly remote region, thankfully. There were also 3 fatalities in a magnitude-6.4 event in Indonesia on the 25^th.

Other notable earthquakes included a 6.7 in Papua New Guinea, a 6.6 near the Solomon Islands, in the South Pacific, and a 7.4 near Martinique, in the eastern Caribbean.

That about does it for the November Hazards Roundup. You can get more USGS natural hazards info by going to usgs.gov/hazards.

Thank you for listening to the USGS CoreCast. CoreCast, of course, is a product of the U.S. Geological Survey, Department of the Interior. Until next time, thanks for listening-I'm Dave Hebert. You take it easy.

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Music credit:

"100 BPM Bassline A" by frifrafro

Mentioned in this segment:

• The USGS Natural Hazards Gateway