Every morning for the past two weeks while I've been sitting looking out over the river (slough actually) and watching the birds start their day, I noticed large wakes in the water. The disturbance started about 1/8 mile away, during the receding tide, which is a little odd, it appears to be a school of fish or one really big one. The wake is about the size of a small fishing boat with a small outboard motor on it, nothing surfaced and nothing jumped.
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| Not in our slough, I don't think the fish I see are nearly this large. |
I saw a very large fish roll about 20 feet from shore several days ago, I couldn't tell if it was a carp, striper or sturgeon. I have seen some dorsal fins and tail fins come out of the water, it makes me think they are salmon, so yesterday I put new line on a fishing pole, put the reel on a new pole, (long story) and rigged it up with a Blue Fox salmon spinner. I had a restive night waiting for daybreak, I did not want to miss it. The Grand Finale! The school of fish did not go by, I could not believe they would not satisfy my personal goal of catching one of them, they did not swim by. I think I missed the run, I will be there again tomorrow, if they don't show up I will set up for sturgeon. But it's not like I don't have anything else to do, I started working on my next video, setting it up, and I put the finishing touches on my thoughts pertaining to my next blog, (this one).
The sky had some clouds and rain is predicted, while I was waiting for the fish to rush by me I began to think about the drought and the rain. As the entire country knows California was on fire for the entire summer, the underbrush was burned away, giant trees reduced to ash, homes destroyed, and the ground was laid bare. Exactly what I was thinking about, in the light rain, if the rain starts to come down harder I wonder and worry about landslides (Link ). On the news broadcast, this evening was a Lady who had to abandon her home last January due to the hill behind her house coming down on her. High on the hill is an asphalt road, it lost its base and one half of it was washed away exposing the soil beneath it. The City and County reportedly have all of their paperwork in order, the hold up is FEMA, the Federal Government. Apparently, to receive Federal funding there is an entirely different set of paperwork that has to be processed outside of the City and County documents, nothing can proceed until all paperwork is completed. (Remember the saying President Reagan started? "I'm with the government and I'm here to help".) Now the Lady, who has a young daughter living with her, has to wait most likely until spring for the repairs to be made. It must be an uneasy feeling to live beneath a slug of mud poised to set loose down the hill and join her for breakfast in her dining area on any given morning. I for one hope it gets repaired before a heavy rain, the slide is completely on City/County property, disabling her from performing any repairs or pre-emtive actions to keep the muck from destroying her home.
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| Mudslides occur after wildfires or massive amounts of rain in a short amount of time. The ground shaking will accelerate the collapse of the hillside. |
It makes me wonder why her insurance company wouldn't erect a barrier, maybe it would save them some money in the long run. This slide is one of many I would suspect, and it makes me wonder what makes a hill slide like that, I am fairly certain I know at least part of the driving factors, so here we go:
After years of a severe drought, the official tally has we experienced a 5-year lack of rain, I seem to remember it more like 7, in reality, I believe it was 5 years of little rain with 2 years prior of reduced rain as well. The soil dried out completely, during the summer of 2016 going down any road in my area the effects of the drought on the trees was obvious. Everywhere we went I (riding shotgun, my wife drives), I would point out all of the dead and dying trees, still, today going down the street those trees are still dead and many are suffering. My cherry tree is a bad actor, I'm not sure why it did this, early in the spring the tree filled up with leaves, I had more cherry's than ever for that tree. (Link to a discussion about the number of trees lost during the drought, in the Southwest.) August comes around and all the leaves fall off, that is typical for this knucklehead tree, October comes around and the leaves grew back! There are no new cherry's on it, but my apple tree started a new crop, what in the world is going on? Well, that's another blog, only if I can come up with an answer, otherwise I will sweep it under the proverbial rug, (sweep sweep, gone). Back to the mud, the dry soil is clinging to the side of hill now, a large slide occurred during the last springs rain and for the majority of them have stabilized to a position of being "not safe", but not in "imminent" fear of becoming unstabilized and become completely detached and slide downhill. Our eternal nemesis is one bad actor at fault, Gravity, the reality that binds us together, it's not really at 'fault", it's just one fact of nature controlling part of a slide. After a prolonged period of no rain which dries the soil to a point of nearly zero moisture, the drying can actually encourage wildfires.
Spontaneous combustion occurs in the layers of compressed flammable material when there is a layer with 3% moisture, it's not an official measurement, it's mine. I dealt with spontaneous combustion in a huge barn filled with straw bales and grape pomace. (These are grapes skins, seeds, and pulp after they are squeezed for the wine crush). We dried the pomace of for use as livestock feed, so we stored it in huge piles and it would ignite constantly, so we went out to discover what was happening. We would dig into the pile, it was 100 yards wide and 300 yards long inside a barn, yes huge, we dug into the pile and would find these veins of smoldering pomace. We (there was two of us) would take samples above and below the heated section, it was glowing red hot, we would then check the moisture level of each sample. It was found the spots with 3% moisture were more prone to ignite, I surmise it's the same in the wild after a drought, some of the fires last summer may have started in this way. Our barn did start on fire, it was a spectacular blaze, the rural volunteer fire department supplied the water we put it out, fires in an industry often are dealt with in-house, all industrial fires I have been involved in were put out by "ships company", or the companies crew. Link to a discussion on spontaneous combustion.
Back to the mudslides, the soil is so very dry after these droughts they soak up water like a sponge, and it is held in suspension with the dirt and organic material. There is a point the land will become saturated with water and become the consistency of pudding. This causes the year-old slide to become unstable, a layer of water will form between the compacted dirt below the slide and the soft loose soil that makes up the slide area. The water adds a considerable amount of weight, a gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds, it takes thousands of gallons permeating the layers of soil adding tons to the weight of the slide. There is a point when the top layer of "slide" soil will begin to move, once it begins to move the momentum will not allow it to stop, the unbelievable weight is unstoppable. That leads us to the question I had earlier about the insurance company's performing "pro-active" repairs to attempt to minimize damage. The sheer mass of the mud is the reason, nothing in the world could be placed in its path and successfully stop it from following it's path to the lowest point in its direction. A great wall would have to be constructed, it would most likely be so cost inefficient to make it less expensive to just rebuild the house. Looming larger is not just the destruction of the home and outbuildings but if someone were to be inside the home when it is inundated by the slow-moving ooze, it would be tragic.
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| There are no words to describe this mud crashing through a home. |
Now I wonder how comfortable can a person be under those conditions, it's not like a fire alarm, mudslide alarms have most likely been invented and they are available somewhere but where? And for what cost? I suspect to construct an alarm would be a "custom" installation, I'm sure there is a way to make an alarm, however it most likely is not worth the cost. So what would a person do when living below, remember this thing is literally hanging over some peoples heads, indeed hanging over their entire lives. I also wonder what happens to the homes that are "red-taped" with no repairs being made to them, then the owners show up to continue their lives. Do they then have to find somewhere else to live until their house is ready for occupancy? Who would pay for the relocation of these people? Would it be the county or city? Most likely not because their requirements have been met, it's the Federal Government that is the holdup. It's easy to see why most disasters take the route of litigation that run on for years. I don't have answers for this, I only have questions, one thing I kind of think I would do, I would not stay anywhere with a looming slug of mud ready to bury me. The Mud Flats mudslide on Highway 1 in Big Sur consists of 5 million cubic yards of the earth all piled up on top of the Coast Highway. If each cubic yard had only two gallons of water in it, the weight added would be immense, 20 million gallons x 8 pounds per gallon = 160,000,000 pounds of water, massive tonnage. The Reality is there is most likely more than 2 gallons in each cubic yard, especially if it has been raining consistently. Wow, that's a lot of weight, once it starts to move there is not much if anything that can stop it. Link to an article on the "Mud Creek Slide" in Big Sur.
Thanks for reading, I don't have an answer on the prediction of a mudslide or even if I would stay in a threatened environment such as a house. What would you do? I hope the only activity prior to expecting the muck to slide is not merely to buy a couple of shovels, but that is definitely the place to start. Thanks for reading and sharing, follow me on G+ and Facebook if you so desire, and please share my blog. Thanks,
jacquesandkate emergencykitsplus.com.
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