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Saturday, June 16, 2012
Help the EPA send a strong message to Big Coal
Friday, June 15, 2012
CT man rescued minutes before search party was to be called off!
Missing CT man found, lucky to be alive
Another reason not to hike alone and having a plan!
BEACON FALLS, CT (NBC) -- A Connecticut man who has been missing for a week has been found safe.
A state worker found Richard Roncarti, 50, around 12:30 p.m. on Thursday in the Beacon Falls section of the Naugatuck State Forest.
He was rescued just minutes before the search was going to be called off, officials said.
Crews said Roncarti was stranded in the Naugatuck State Forest with severe injuries after falling 100 feet and having no food or water for seven days. Emergency crews said he was lucky to be alive.
“He looked like he had been in the weather a few days. He was beat up pretty good,” Chief Michael Pratt, of the Beacon Falls Fire Department, said....
http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/local/south/12007749039617/missing-ct-man-found-lucky-to-be-alive/
Another reason not to hike alone and having a plan!
BEACON FALLS, CT (NBC) -- A Connecticut man who has been missing for a week has been found safe.
A state worker found Richard Roncarti, 50, around 12:30 p.m. on Thursday in the Beacon Falls section of the Naugatuck State Forest.
He was rescued just minutes before the search was going to be called off, officials said.
Crews said Roncarti was stranded in the Naugatuck State Forest with severe injuries after falling 100 feet and having no food or water for seven days. Emergency crews said he was lucky to be alive.
“He looked like he had been in the weather a few days. He was beat up pretty good,” Chief Michael Pratt, of the Beacon Falls Fire Department, said....
http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/local/south/12007749039617/missing-ct-man-found-lucky-to-be-alive/
WWF June eNewsletter
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Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Rock risk forces Yosemite closures
Rock risk forces Yosemite closures
By TRACIE CONE
Associated Press
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) - Falling boulders are the single biggest force shaping Yosemite Valley, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the national park system. Now swaths of some popular haunts are closing for good after geologists confirmed that unsuspecting tourists and employees are being lodged in harm's way.
On Thursday, the National Park Service will announce that potential danger from the unstable 3,000-foot-tall Glacier Point, a granite promontory that for decades has provided a dramatic backdrop to park events, will leave some of the valley's most popular lodging areas permanently uninhabitable.
"There are no absolutely safe areas in Yosemite Valley," said Greg Stock, the park's first staff geologist and the primary author of a new study that assesses the potential risk to people from falling rocks in the steep-sided valley. The highest risk area is family friendly Curry Village, which was hit by a major rock fall several years ago.
A newly delineated "hazard zone" also outlines other areas, including the popular climbing wall El Capitan, where the danger posed by the rock falls is high but risk of injury is low because they aren't continuously occupied.
"Rock falls are common in Yosemite Valley, California, posing substantial hazard and risk to the approximately four million annual visitors to Yosemite National Park," reads the ominous opening line of the report.
The move to close parts of historic Curry Village, a camp of canvas and wooden cabins, comes four years after the equivalent of 570 dump trucks of boulders hit 17 cabins, flattened one and sent schoolchildren scrambling for their lives. The park fenced off 233 of the 600 cabins in the village.
The new report, obtained by The Associated Press, now identifies 18 more that will be closed Thursday.
An examination by the AP after the 2008 fall found park officials were aware of U.S. Geological Survey studies dating back to 1996 that show Glacier Point behind Curry Village was susceptible to rock avalanches. Yet visitors were not warned of the potential danger, and the park service repaired and reused rock-battered cabins.
Rock falls in and around the century-old Curry Village have killed two people and injured two dozen others since 1996. Since officials began keeping track in 1857, 15 people have died throughout the valley and 85 have been injured from falling rocks.
This new study, prompted by the 2008 Curry event, is the first to assess risk to people. Officials say dangers exist in nearly every national park but they are particularly acute in Yosemite given its unstable geology, which causes rock falls weekly. Park officials will use the study to develop policy that guides future planning.
Yosemite Valley is ringed by 3,000-foot walls of granite. Since the last glacier retreated 15,000 years ago, the biggest factor shaping the most popular tourist destinations in the park has been the sloughing of rock when granite heats and cools and eventually breaks along fissures and cracks.
Stock used laser mapping to create the first detailed look at the cliffs, which ultimately could identify which formations are most vulnerable.
The report shows the greatest dangers are within 180 feet of the base of the cliffs. However, there is a 10 percent chance a potentially deadly boulder will fall outside of the zone every 50 years.
With the removal of lodging from highly problematic areas and increased awareness, risk can be reduced by up to 95 percent, Stock said. "That's a huge reduction, but it's not possible to reduce all risk in the park."
Part of Yosemite's charm is the guest cabins and other structures built around boulders, some the size of houses. It was widely assumed that they could have fallen in one cataclysmic event. The new study concluded that the boulders had fallen over time, and the information was used to delineate the most potentially dangerous areas of the valley.
"It's easy now to look around and see all of these rocks and know there's a hazard here, but that hasn't always been the case," said park spokesman Scott Gediman.
In November 1980, falling rocks killed three people and injured 19 more on the trail to Yosemite Falls, the icon of the valley and one of the most popular visitor hikes.
The biggest modern-day rock avalanche occurred in 1987, when an unstable formation called Middle Brother on the north side of the valley launched the equivalent of more than 22,000 dump truck loads of rock onto the main road.
Last year 53 rock falls occurred, including a six-ton boulder that fell in September from the upper Yosemite Falls Trail onto an amphitheater. Fragments hit a footbridge where tourists take photos, but no one was injured.
Park officials said two employee dormitories and parts of three others built in 1999 would be closing, which will further exasperate a critical staff housing shortage.
Read more: http://ow.ly/bzfKg
By TRACIE CONE
Associated Press
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) - Falling boulders are the single biggest force shaping Yosemite Valley, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the national park system. Now swaths of some popular haunts are closing for good after geologists confirmed that unsuspecting tourists and employees are being lodged in harm's way.
On Thursday, the National Park Service will announce that potential danger from the unstable 3,000-foot-tall Glacier Point, a granite promontory that for decades has provided a dramatic backdrop to park events, will leave some of the valley's most popular lodging areas permanently uninhabitable.
"There are no absolutely safe areas in Yosemite Valley," said Greg Stock, the park's first staff geologist and the primary author of a new study that assesses the potential risk to people from falling rocks in the steep-sided valley. The highest risk area is family friendly Curry Village, which was hit by a major rock fall several years ago.
A newly delineated "hazard zone" also outlines other areas, including the popular climbing wall El Capitan, where the danger posed by the rock falls is high but risk of injury is low because they aren't continuously occupied.
"Rock falls are common in Yosemite Valley, California, posing substantial hazard and risk to the approximately four million annual visitors to Yosemite National Park," reads the ominous opening line of the report.
The move to close parts of historic Curry Village, a camp of canvas and wooden cabins, comes four years after the equivalent of 570 dump trucks of boulders hit 17 cabins, flattened one and sent schoolchildren scrambling for their lives. The park fenced off 233 of the 600 cabins in the village.
The new report, obtained by The Associated Press, now identifies 18 more that will be closed Thursday.
An examination by the AP after the 2008 fall found park officials were aware of U.S. Geological Survey studies dating back to 1996 that show Glacier Point behind Curry Village was susceptible to rock avalanches. Yet visitors were not warned of the potential danger, and the park service repaired and reused rock-battered cabins.
Rock falls in and around the century-old Curry Village have killed two people and injured two dozen others since 1996. Since officials began keeping track in 1857, 15 people have died throughout the valley and 85 have been injured from falling rocks.
This new study, prompted by the 2008 Curry event, is the first to assess risk to people. Officials say dangers exist in nearly every national park but they are particularly acute in Yosemite given its unstable geology, which causes rock falls weekly. Park officials will use the study to develop policy that guides future planning.
Yosemite Valley is ringed by 3,000-foot walls of granite. Since the last glacier retreated 15,000 years ago, the biggest factor shaping the most popular tourist destinations in the park has been the sloughing of rock when granite heats and cools and eventually breaks along fissures and cracks.
Stock used laser mapping to create the first detailed look at the cliffs, which ultimately could identify which formations are most vulnerable.
The report shows the greatest dangers are within 180 feet of the base of the cliffs. However, there is a 10 percent chance a potentially deadly boulder will fall outside of the zone every 50 years.
With the removal of lodging from highly problematic areas and increased awareness, risk can be reduced by up to 95 percent, Stock said. "That's a huge reduction, but it's not possible to reduce all risk in the park."
Part of Yosemite's charm is the guest cabins and other structures built around boulders, some the size of houses. It was widely assumed that they could have fallen in one cataclysmic event. The new study concluded that the boulders had fallen over time, and the information was used to delineate the most potentially dangerous areas of the valley.
"It's easy now to look around and see all of these rocks and know there's a hazard here, but that hasn't always been the case," said park spokesman Scott Gediman.
In November 1980, falling rocks killed three people and injured 19 more on the trail to Yosemite Falls, the icon of the valley and one of the most popular visitor hikes.
The biggest modern-day rock avalanche occurred in 1987, when an unstable formation called Middle Brother on the north side of the valley launched the equivalent of more than 22,000 dump truck loads of rock onto the main road.
Last year 53 rock falls occurred, including a six-ton boulder that fell in September from the upper Yosemite Falls Trail onto an amphitheater. Fragments hit a footbridge where tourists take photos, but no one was injured.
Park officials said two employee dormitories and parts of three others built in 1999 would be closing, which will further exasperate a critical staff housing shortage.
Read more: http://ow.ly/bzfKg
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