Re: California Disasters Content Reposted on VolcanoMadness Blog

Your failure to respond to my inquiry will end your membership and continued California Disasters & Geology2 theft of content to your blog which appears to be driven by your desire to increase traffic to your blog without having to create your own content. You are not helping the reputation of Nigerians in the world. You need to examine yourself.

On Tue, Nov 19, 2019 at 1:07 AM Kim Noyes <kimnoyes@gmail.com> wrote:

I am curious as to why you have been auto-redirecting my California Disasters content onto your Blogger account entitled "Volcano Madness" for over a decade. You never asked permission and yet filled your blog with my content also without giving credit. Before I take action I would like to hear your side of the story first. I'm a reasonable man.

California Disasters co-Founder & Owner

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Kim Noyes about.me/kim.noyes

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Kim Noyes about.me/kim.noyes

[CaliforniaDisasters] California Disasters - Daily Summary

This is a daily summary for California Disasters. View all your groups.io groups, and edit your subscriptions, here. Do not reply to this email. To view and reply to a topic, click the subject. new topics: ● On This Date In California Weather History (November 19) By Kim Noyes ● The Case for Letting Malibu Burn By Kim Noyes ● Red Flag Warnings - NorCal (11/19/2019-AM) By Kim Noyes ● After the Tubbs Fire, homes in California town are being rebuilt without strong building codes #tubbsfire By Kim Noyes ● Teacher Helps Revive the Role of Fire Lookouts By Kim Noyes ● Newsom Signs Wildfire Liability Bill, Utility Customers to Pay $10.5 Billion Into New Fund By Kim Noyes ● Bankrupt PG&E increases offer to California wildfire victims. Here's the utility's new plan. By Kim Noyes ● North Ops News & Notes Update (11/19/2019-2:10PM) By Kim Noyes ● Radio traffic - The first 2 hours of the Camp Fire in Paradise [AUDIO] #campfire By Kim Noyes ● Day of Fire - Camp Fire Lessons Learned #campfire By Kim Noyes ● Flash Flood Warnings - SoCal (11/19/2019-PM) 2 By Kim Noyes ● 900,000 Californians Prepare for Another Blackout Wednesday By Kim Noyes ● Oz Fires on MODIS (11/19/2019-PM PST) [ATTACHMENTS] 2 By Kim Noyes ● Steps to Reduce the Risk of Wildfires in California By Kim Noyes ● Long-Term Wear Found on PG&E Line That Sparked Camp Fire [VIDEO] #campfire By Kim Noyes Home Subscription Messages New Topic   © 2019 Groups.io

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[CaliforniaDisasters] California Disasters - Daily Summary

This is a daily summary for California Disasters. View all your groups.io groups, and edit your subscriptions, here. Do not reply to this email. To view and reply to a topic, click the subject. new topics: ● On This Date In California Weather History (November 18) By Kim Noyes ● Protecting California Communities in the Age of Mega Fires [VIDEO] By Kim Noyes ● HAM radio operators seek greater role in emergencies By Kim Noyes ● Be Prepared: Fire Season May Just Be Getting Started in Northern California By Kim Noyes ● NSW bushfires burn through more land than any other blazes in past 25 years By Kim Noyes ● MAP: Bay Area counties to be affected by PG&E power shutoffs [INTERACTIVE MAP] By Kim Noyes ● The King Fire - A New Kind of Wildfire? [VIDEO] By Kim Noyes ● California, Sydney ... Bushfire And Climate Change Debate Rage By Kim Noyes ● PG&E officials say wildfires averted thanks to shutoffs 3 By Kim Noyes, Mark Williams, Pamela Alley ● PG&E Interactive Outage Map By Kim Noyes ● See How Fast Small Fire Can Get Into Homes: Wildland-Urban Interface Fire, Initial Attack, Reno F.D. By Kim Noyes ● Is Florida the Answer to California's Fire Problem? By Kim Noyes ● Report released on the entrapment of firefighter and two civilians on Kincade Fire 2 #kincadefire By Kim Noyes, Rick Bates, NK7I ● A Contractor Died Fighting a 2016 Wildfire – His Employer Was Just Convicted of Violating Labor Laws #soberanesfire By Kim Noyes ● Red Flag Warnings - NorCal (11/18/2019-PM) By Kim Noyes ● North Ops News & Notes Update (11/18/2019-4:30PM) By Kim Noyes ● 'There were no victories': Netflix releases heartbreaking Camp Fire documentary #campfire By Kim Noyes Home Subscription Messages New Topic   © 2019 Groups.io

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California Disasters Content Reposted on VolcanoMadness Blog

I am curious as to why you have been auto-redirecting my California Disasters content onto your Blogger account entitled "Volcano Madness" for over a decade. You never asked permission and yet filled your blog with my content also without giving credit. Before I take action I would like to hear your side of the story first. I'm a reasonable man.

California Disasters co-Founder & Owner

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[CaliforniaDisasters] The Blackhawk Landslide [Mojave Desert]

The Blackhawk Landslide

Posted by Dave Petley

15 November 2019

The Blackhawk landslide

The Blackhawk landslide is without doubt one of the most impressive rock avalanches on Earth.  It is located at 34.393, -116.773 in the Lucerne Valley on the escarpment that divides the San Bernardino Mountains to the south from the Mojave Desert to the north, in California.  This is a Google Earth image of the landslide source and deposit:-

A Google Earth image of the Blackhawk landslide in the Lucerne Valley of California.

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As the image shows, this is a landslide on a very grand scale.  With an estimated volume of about 300 million cubic metres, the landslide extends over a distance of about 9 km from the crown to the toe, with a deposit that is up to 2 km wide and up to 30 m thick.  The fall height is estimated to be about 1,200 m in total, making this a highly mobile landslide.

The event is not recent.  Dating of the deposit suggests that it may have occurred about 18,000 years ago, although there is huge uncertainty in that date.  However, in the dry desert environment of inland California the landslide is exceptionally well-preserved, and of course the landslide mass contrasts with the valley floor, rendering the mass highly visible.

This is a landslide that is surprisingly poorly investigated.  There is a very nice PhD thesis from 1959 by Ronald Shreeve that is online, which describes the geology and mechanics of the landslide.  This was in the days in which a PhD thesis could be just 84 pages long (there are lessons to learn from that!).   Shreeve describes the geology, and tries to explain the exceptional mobility of the landslide, hypothesizing that it may have moved on a lubricating basal air layer.  There is also a nice blog article about it on the excellent Looking for Detachment blog.  Finally, there is a book chapter from 1978 about the landslide by Brann Johnson, but even the University of Sheffield subscription to Science Direct does not provide access to that one.

This is landslide that would really benefit from a revisit using up to date techniques.  There is exquisite hummocky morphology in the landslide deposit, captured well in the this 2006 Google Earth image:-

Google Earth image of the Blackhawk landslide in California

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And to me, the now dissected landslide source area suggests that this might have been quite a complex event too.  This is a Google Earth image of the landslide scar area; I have annotated the approximate boundaries of the upper part of the deposit:-

Google Earth image of the source area of the Blackhawk landslide.

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The implication appears to be a highly unusual morphology of the landslide scar.  It is not clear to me how the mechanics of this part of the landslide motion would have operated – is there a large volume of stalled material still within the scar area?

Acknowledgement and footnote

Many thanks to my friend funkenbeachin for pointing out this landslide, and for the discussions about it.  He has hypothesised that there may be other events in this area as well – take a look at the image below.    It is not hard to believe that there is more than one landslide deposit on the valley floor:-

Wide angle Google Earth view of the valley floor around the Blackhawk landslide

Source: https://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2019/11/15/the-blackhawk-landslide/

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Kim Noyes about.me/kim.noyes

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[CaliforniaDisasters] On This Date In California Weather History (November 15)

2015: An early season cold front raked the Mojave and Inyo Valleys with powerful wind gusts.

Wind gusts ranging from 51-54 mph were recorded at higher elevation on both sides of the Inyo Valley near Independence.

A semi truck was overturned on Highway 395 near Haiwee Reservoir in southern Inyo County by damaging wind gusts.

A 62 mph wind gust was recorded near Fort Irwin.

2008: Santa Ana winds blew from this day to 11/19.

Winds gusted over 70 mph in the Santa Ana Mountains and over 60 mph in the northern Inland Empire.

The Freeway Complex Fire burned from Corona through Chino Hills and Yorba Linda.

Due to the fire 40,000 people were evacuated and State Routes 91, 71, and 57 were temporarily closed.

Ultimately the fire would burn 30,305 acres and 361 structures,and would injure 14 firefighters.

2006: A series of surge waves from a distant earthquake caused approximately 8 hours of jostling in Santa Cruz Harbor.

About a 4' range of tidal difference occurred causing damage to 7 docks.

2003:  A weakening cold front brought 5"-7" of new snow to the upper elevations of the Southern Sierra Nevada during the afternoon of the 15th. Gin Flat and Volcanic Knob reported 7" of new snow with Huntington Lake receiving 5". 

2000: Dense fog formed in a cold environment with temperatures at or just below 32° F along Highways152 and 33 in West Merced County and Fresno County (Dos Palos, Kerman) and less than 600 foot visibility along roadways on the east side of the Central Valley. 

Around the Fresno County citrus belt, overnight low temperatures dropped to 28° F at Clovis, Navelencia, and Riverbend.  

1998: Dense fog formed at Merced by 2245 PST on 11/14/98, subsequently following at Fresno by 0156 PST. 

The Dense Fog Advisory had been issued for widespread fog at 0010 PST on 11/15/98. 

A spotter from the Livingston area confirmed dense fog of less than100 feet visibility at 0748 PST on 11/15/98.

1981: Strong winds damaged power lines in the Reno, NV area.
In some areas power was out for 24 hours.
There was extensive damage to roofs, trees, and vehicles.
An unofficial wind gust of 101 mph was reported in southwest Reno.

1972: Snow blankets the southern Sierra from the 14th-17th with heavy amounts as low as 6,000 feet: Lodgepole received 39" of snow and Grant Grove 30".

1964: A storm dropped a total of 4" of snow at McCarran Airport.

The reduced visibility resulted in the crash of a plane 12 miles southwest of Las Vegas,NV, that killed all 28 passengers.

1964: For the second day in a row Alpine reported a trace of snowfall. 

1958: The morning low temperature at Reno, NV was 7° F.

1952: Laguna Beach residents got a rare surprise when it started snowing. Officially a trace of snow was reported, the only time snow has ever been reported in the city in November.

1952: 1" of snow whitened the ground at Mojave.

1916: Santa Rosa had a low temperature of 21° F -- a record for the month.

Source: NWS San Francisco/Monterey, Hanford, Reno, Las Vegas, & San Diego 

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[CaliforniaDisasters] Kaiser Evacuation 2017

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[CaliforniaDisasters] A Name Lost in Flames

Did the last remaining unidentified victim of last year's Camp Fire die a hero?

By Lizzie Johnson | Nov. 8, 2019

CONCOW, Butte County — Victim No. 53 was pulled from the rubble of someone else's life.

One year after the historic Camp Fire blasted through the Sierra Nevada foothills, 84 people who died in the flames have been identified. But one person endures as a mystery — a man whose remains were found in the scorched footprint of a mobile home, burned beyond recognition, in this tiny community just east of Paradise.

He may have died a hero. And we may never know his name.

In the wake of the fire that swept through Butte County on Nov. 8, 2018, the worst blaze in California history, Victim No. 53 was carefully unearthed from the property on Schwyhart Lane in Concow. How did he come to be there? No one knew.

This was the home of Lon and Ellen Walker. They'd been married for 30 years after meeting in 1988 in Napa. Lon was a truck driver, Ellen a medical transcriber. Both had been married before. On their first date, they simply met up and chatted in the 1976 station wagon Ellen had driven west from Ohio. They moved to Concow to retire.

Walker holds a photo of Ellen, 73. The remains of Victim No. 53 were found with hers.

| Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

On the morning of the fire, Lon, 76, picked up a load of lumber in Plumas County. He had been about to quit his trucking job so he could take care of Ellen, who at age 73 suffered from fibromyalgia and didn't like using her walker. She moved slowly about their place, tending to the fruit trees and four cats. The calico, Ginger, was her favorite.

The fire that ignited around 6:15 a.m. under Pacific Gas and Electric Co. transmission lines moved quickly, traveling west nearly 3 miles to Concow within an hour. Ellen was among many people the fire trapped in their homes and cars.

Lon feared the worst, that she'd indeed died in the fire. But when confirmation of her death came, weeks later, there was also a strange piece of news — the presence of Victim No. 53.

The two victims' bodies had appeared to be one, until anthropologists from Chico State University distinguished three kneecaps among the remains. A year after he was found, authorities still have few clues to who he might be.

But they're determined to somehow give him a name and deliver him to his family.

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The site of the Walkers' mobile home on Schwyhart Lane in Concow. After 30 years of marriage, Lon was going to stop working to help Ellen, who used a walker.

| Photos By Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

To identify the victims of the Camp Fire, authorities had to search more than 19,000 ruined structures for bodies, the biggest operation of its kind in state history. Meanwhile, at one point, the number of missing-persons reports connected to the blaze swelled to more than 10,000.

Bone often resembles construction materials, and as anthropologists separated bits of Sheetrock and ceiling panels from recovered skeletal fragments, they learned that investigators in the field weren't always able to discern between them. The presence of animal bones and cremation urns destroyed in the fire complicated matters.

Occasionally, multiple victims were accidentally lumped together, or a single victim's remains were separated, causing the death count to fall or rise. What had come to them as Ellen's remains, anthropologists soon realized, were actually those of two people — though only one had been reported missing at that location.

No unclaimed vehicles were found near the mobile home on Schwyhart Lane. And no men with links to the area were unaccounted for. One guess was that Victim No. 53 might have rushed in to try to save Ellen from the advancing flames, losing his life trying to do a good deed.

"I don't know why he was at the house," said Sacramento County Coroner Kim Gin, whose office did autopsies of most of the Camp Fire victims. "Nobody knows who he could possibly be. We can go years without knowing who someone is. It's one of these cases that is going to take quite a bit of time to get an answer, if we ever do."

Some officials believe Victim No. 53 — his designation at the coroner's office — might have been a migrant worker from a nearby marijuana farm. Perhaps, they speculate, he had seen her gardening in the past, knew she was disabled, so tried to save her.

"This is our mystery guy," said Jennifer Celentano, the coroner's investigator for the Butte County Sheriff's Office. "He had no reason to be there. We don't know if maybe he came up to trim plants and was running from the fire, or knew there was an elderly woman that needed help. It's a mystery."

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Sacramento County Coroner Kimberly Gin and her team use the walls in this hallway to keep information organized to identify the Camp Fire victims. Each poster represents a person.

| Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

After the Camp Fire, officials turned to Boston-based ANDE Corp., which volunteered its "Rapid DNA" technology to Butte County and identified 23 victims in the first month. A mobile resource center was set up in Chico, where families of missing persons could swab the insides of their cheeks to provide matchable genetic samples.

Law enforcement officers from as far away as Tennessee and Virginia helped collect DNA from potential relatives of victims who lived far from Butte County. But as the count of unidentified victims went down, No. 53 stayed nameless.

"It's quite possible that the family of this unfortunate person has no idea that he was ever in California," said Richard Selden, ANDE's founder and chief scientific officer. "Maybe the biological relatives don't even know the person is missing. There are probably a dozen family members who are wondering why their loved one stopped communicating with them."

About 90% of Camp Fire victims were identified using Rapid DNA testing. At times, though, a DNA sample salvaged from the fire was too damaged, and Selden couldn't distinguish genetic markers. Victim No. 53 was one of those cases.

Authorities often could make an identification by examining other elements in the remains, like teeth fillings or hip and knee replacements. Family members assisted in gathering dental and medical records. But none of those methods were helpful in the case of Victim No. 53, so Selden turned to a full DNA sequencing.

This more elaborate laboratory analysis takes weeks and can reveal clues such as a person's gender and approximate age. But it doesn't guarantee a match — and it didn't for Selden's mystery man.

"Just because you get a result doesn't mean you automatically know who this is," Gin, the Sacramento coroner, said. "You have to put regular investigative work into it once you get that potential hit."

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A makeshift memorial in Paradise commemorates the 85 people killed in the Camp Fire. Each victim but one has a name. Did he die trying to save Ellen Walker?

| Photos By Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

This fall, the case of Victim No. 53 landed with Margaret Press, the co-founder of the DNA Doe Project.

The organization in Sebastopol takes on investigations that have eluded coroners. It works in the field of genetic genealogy, which combines DNA testing with the type of research people use to build family trees, and was central in leading to the arrest last year of Joseph James DeAngelo, the suspected Golden State Killer who terrorized California in the 1970s and 1980s.

Press uses GedMatch, a website that compares DNA to offer a percentage likelihood that two people are related. Parents and children share 50% of their DNA, as do siblings. That number drops to 25% for grandparents and 12.5% for cousins. For Victim No. 53, Press hopes to find, if not a first cousin, perhaps a third cousin that shared the same great-grandfather.

Little by little, she is trying to zero in on his identity. But there's an obstacle: Since it was revealed that GedMatch helped investigators find DeAngelo, the website changed its rules to satisfy privacy concerns. Now, users must opt in to helping with law enforcement cases, like the one Press is pursuing, and many opt out.

So Press can see only one-tenth of the database of 1.5 million people — a small fraction of possible relatives of Victim No. 53.

"They tipped over the apple cart, and there was outrage rippling through the community that threatened websites' ability to stay up for genealogy purposes," Press said. "It has polarized people in a sad and sometimes toxic way. As a little tiny community, we are struggling with how to resolve these issues."

The Butte County Sheriff's Office continues to probe the mystery of the unidentified victim as well, but deputies have had difficulty finding people with good information.

In the meantime, the county turned the dead man's case over to a state-appointed public guardian, who is suing PG&E on his behalf. Any settlement would be passed on to his relatives — if authorities ever locate them.

"This is such an unusual circumstance," Press said. "Everybody should have a name and be returned to their family. It's something, as a species, we have done ever since we have had names. This man's family is, metaphorically, parked outside a coroner's office, unable to even get a death certificate right now."

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Lon Walker, 76, moved to the Chateau Senior Mobile Home Park in Oroville after Ellen died at their home in Concow. Walker takes some satisfaction knowing his wife didn't die alone.

| Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

One year after the Camp Fire killed his wife and a man who may have tried to help her, Lon Walker is trying to move on.

He remembers how Ellen was a "proper lady," never uttering a single curse, as far as he knew. How she wore pretty clothes, loved singing in the church choir and regularly got her hair set at Ultimate Cut in Oroville. How he was so close to hanging up his trucking job for the season, just to stay home with her.

"She was my everything," he says. "We had a beautiful life together in Concow, with trees and flowers. I'll tell you what, she left a wonderful legacy for this old man. I was looking forward to spending the rest of our lives together, until we were old and tired, or maybe just old."

He paused.

"If I had been there ... if I had been there, this wouldn't have happened. My heart aches and breaks not being the man I should have been. It still hurts me after all of this time, and it hasn't been that much time."

Since the fire, he's moved to a retirement community in Oroville, transplanting a few of his wife's bushes to his new front yard, something to remind him of their home. Lon is grateful that his wife didn't die alone. But he wants to know just what happened as the Camp Fire roared toward Schwyhart Lane.

"It goes beyond imagination," he said. "I have to find some answers."

Source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/california-wildfires/article/Mystery-in-Paradise-Did-the-last-unidentified-14812373.php

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