Tag: hot springs
The July 2021 Atami, Japan Landslide: “A Man-Made Calamity”
“This is hell,” a survivor said after a steep slope failed in the idyllic resort town of Atami, Japan, sending a torrent of mud careening into houses and people. Ten are dead, seventeen still missing as of this writing.
Landslides are a grim fact of life in many areas with steep topography. Gravity works. Things get loose and come down. Travel into the mountains basically anywhere, and you’ll see the evidence: streaks of bare earth where trees have been swept away, cascades of boulders marking areas where rock failed under the influence of weathering and physics. Sometimes earthquakes shake things until they topple. It seems like the most natural thing in the world.
But not this time. Nothing about this tragedy was natural.
Rainbows Over Geology
Are you ready for some spectacularly beautiful images? It’s a tough time: of course you need some beauty in your life. Allow me to provide!
In between pandemic lockdown preparations, I’ve been spelunking the USGS website and watching the OG Knight Rider. K.I.T.T. is absolutely marvelous, but not quite as beautiful as some of these images I’m finding. USGS scientists are pretty talented photographers! And while most of the photos they take in the field are for strictly scientific purposes, they also turn their lenses to capture the ephemeral beauty that happens geology and meteorology combine.
I’ve lightly edited these photos to enhance their awesomeness. You can click the link in the titles to see the originals.
A 16th Century Volcano Adventure: “The Marvelous Hills of Sulphur”
It’s early 1550, and a young Sir Thomas Hoby is traveling through a volcanic wonderland. Britain hasn’t had anything comparable to the Campanian coast of Italy for tens of millions of years. There are places where geothermally-heated water rises through fractures and faults, used by humans to treat various ailments for milennia, but nothing as raw and exciting as what he sees here.
Taking the highway to the town of Pozzuoli, he marvels at the medical baths (Sudatorii) on the shores of Lago di Agnano: “…they cause good digestion and resolve raw humors, they lighten the body and heal the inward parts, they dry up fistles and wounds, and are very good against gout.”* In an age when medicine is still far more of an art than a science, these medicinal baths fed by volcanic springs are often the best chance at relief for people suffering from poor health.
He is probably unaware that these wonderful Sudatorii are a mere remnant of a medical spa industry that had been booming less than twelve years before.