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By Richard Aster
Multiple strong and damaging earthquakes in southern Puerto Rico starting around Dec. 28, 2019 have killed at least one person, caused many serious injuries and collapsed numerous buildings, including a multistory school in the town of Guánica that luckily was empty at the time. These quakes are the most damaging to strike Puerto Rico since 1918, and the island has been under a state of emergency since Jan. 6, 2020.
The second-most active volcano in the Philippines belched to life on Sunday when it sent a cloud of ash miles into the air that forced thousands to evacuate and shuttered the airport in the capital of Manila.
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Mysterious hums that were heard around the world in 2018 have now been identified as the rumblings of a magma-filled reservoir deep under the Indian Ocean, announcing the birth of an underwater volcano, according to a new study, as CNN reported.
A powerful 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck Puerto Rico just before dawn on Tuesday after a week of heavy seismic activity. The early morning quake caused power plants to shut down to protect themselves, leaving the island in a blackout until power is restored later in the day. It also killed at least one person, injured at least eight and collapsed buildings, as the AP reported.
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Over the past decade, climate-fueled disasters drove over 20 million people a year from their homes, concluded a report released by Oxfam on Monday. The Oxfam study, titled "Forced from Home," was released as two weeks of UN climate negotiations kick-start in Madrid.
Scientists Discover ‘Stormquakes,’ Small Earthquakes Triggered by Hurricanes and Other Major Storms
Powerful hurricanes and other storms can actually cause small earthquakes in the ocean, scientists have found.
Mining Powers Modern Life, but Can Leave Scarred Lands and Polluted Waters Behind
By Matthew Ross
Modern society relies on metals like copper, gold and nickel for uses ranging from medicine to electronics. Most of these elements are rare in Earth's crust, so mining them requires displacing vast volumes of dirt and rock. Hard rock mining – so called because it refers to excavating hard minerals, not softer materials like coal or tar sands – generated $600 billion in revenues worldwide in 2017.
Japan's New Environmental Minister Calls for Closing Down All Nuclear Reactors to Prevent Another Disaster Like Fukushima
Japan's new environmental minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, called Wednesday for permanently shutting down the nation's nuclear reactors to prevent a repeat of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, comments that came just a day after Koizumi's predecessor recommended dumping more than one million tons of radioactive wastewater from the power plant into the Pacific Ocean.
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By Russell Scott and Zach Boren
The British government's recently-departed shale gas commissioner admitted to routinely deleting correspondence and throwing away notes from meetings with fracking companies in a move that may have violated transparency requirements.
Underwater Mudslides Are the Biggest Threat to Offshore Drilling, and Energy Companies Aren’t Ready for Them
By Ian MacDonald
Like generals planning for the last war, oil company managers and government inspectors tend to believe that because they survived the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, they are ready for all contingencies. Today they are expanding drilling into deeper and deeper waters, and the Trump administration is opening more offshore areas to production.
In fact, however, the worst-case scenario for an oil spill catastrophe is not losing control of a single well, as occurred in the BP disaster. Much more damage would be done if one or more of the thousand or so production platforms that now blanket the Gulf of Mexico were destroyed without warning by a deep-sea mudslide.
Heartbreaking & Devastating Camp Fire Was World's Costliest Catastrophe of 2018
Paradise Town Manager Lauren Gill cries during a vigil for Camp Fire victims on Sunday, November 18, 2018, at the First Christian Church of Chico in Chico, California.
Noah Berger / AFP / Getty Images
In terms of natural disasters, 2018 was a really bad year. Communities in the United States and around the world were devastated by record-breaking wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and other catastrophes.
Lamentably, these weather and geophysical events caused 10,400 human deaths and $160 billion in estimated damages last year, reinsurance company Munich Re said on Tuesday.