As most ANP readers know by now, as well as those who read ENENews regularly, we're watching a pair of disasters unfolding upon the West coast of America.... one that is nearly 5 years old and the other much more new and palpable. While we'd all love for these disasters to just 'go away', we see in these new stories they're doing nothing of the sort and instead, getting much worse and leaving heartbreaking carnage in their paths.
The story headlines today and yesterday from ENENews of our unfolding West coast disasters read like an overview of two disastrous horror movies, connected not by the 'monster' terrifying us but by America and a coastline that stretches from California to Alaska. Both disasters caused in part by our relentless and quite reckless pursuit of power, nuclear and methane, we have to ask once more, what has humanity done to our world?
If you don't care about what's happening to the wildlife in the Pacific Ocean and on the West coast, you don't have a heart. The headlines of the two separate disaster stories, created years apart, almost read as if they were one, and if you really think about it, they are...this is what is happening to our planet and wildlife right now.:
TV: “Carcasses littering beaches for miles” on Pacific coast of Alaska — “Complete reproductive failure” — “Horrifying… Horrid… Mind-boggling… Off the charts” — Unprecedented die-off “has potential to be biggest mortality event in state history” — “The most extreme I’ve ever seen” (VIDEOS)
Experts: Multiple types of radioactive material constantly being emitted from LA gas blowout — “I’d be running like hell” — “We are getting higher and higher levels…it’s accumulating” — “Poisons spreading through entire San Fernando Valley” home to 2 million people — “Thousands getting sick… it really is a major, major disaster”
Amazingly, our mainstream media continues to give little to no press at all to Fukushima, which is leaving dead wildlife in its path all along the entire West coast and in the Pacific ocean. It's so sad that we've forgotten that what we do to our Earth, we do to ourselves. However, one completely wonderful quality about this planet is it has a way of 'eliminating' threats to it. If this is what humanity does to that which sustains life, maybe the Earth is better without 'us'. If only our planet could 'select' who to 'eliminate' and focus on those who've created the carnage.
Much more below include several new video reports from the alternative news on the unfolding situations on the West coast and Japan including the bizarre news that the Japanese government now wants a refund for stomping out dissent as shared in the 1st video below from BeautifulGirlByDana. First, a little bit more from Los Angeles on why we should be concerned.:
Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear’s nuclear waste watchdog: “Another important thing that is very significant is that the radon is continually resupplied… Radon is going to be constantly generated by the uranium contained in the methane… So really you’ve got a chronic constant supply of hazardous radon gas coming out of this breach in California.”
Richard Mathews, candidate for California State Senate who studied physics & astronomy at CALTECH: “People are really concerned about this, people are seriously getting sick… Thousands of people are getting sick from this — and it really is a major, major disaster… Methane floats away and spreads around the whole world… All the contaminants that are in with the methane are heavier than the air and that includes… benzene and toluene, hydrogen sulfide — all of those are heavier than air — they tend to stay close to the ground and move downhill. This is happening in the hills above the San Fernando Valley [home to nearly 2 million people] and so the poisons are all moving down into the San Fernando Valley and spreading through the entire San Fernando Valley.
Terry Lodge, attorney: “You have a massive release, probably, of radon going on — and there may actually also be radium particulate… I’d be taking very rapid steps [if I lived in the area], I’d be running like hell. And the reason is, I suspect that there’s little by way of emergency anticipation — what could possibly go wrong? We have this vast underground storage facility… There are not radiation monitors… the problem is sort of the Three Mile Island problem.
If all of this isn't bad enough, we also recently learned from Tap News that Los Angeles is 'drowning in methane' as seen in the graphic below which monitors methane levels throughout the city. The 2nd video below explains the graphic below which proves to us that Los Angeles is in very, very bad shape.
The Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET) is a Cambridge-based nonprofit that’s been shedding light on leaky natural gas infrastructure for years. Last week, HEET sent Boston University Professor Nathan Phillips and Bob Ackley of Gas Safety out to LA to measure pollution in the air surrounding Porter Ranch.
Armed with a laser gas analyzer that can sniff out airborne methane with parts-per-billion precision, Phillips and Ackley drove around the LA area measuring methane concentrations for a period of five days. Every time their analyzer detected elevated gas levels, it plotted the numbers to Google Earth. The red bars on their maps indicate where they drove, with higher bars corresponding to higher methane concentrations.
Here's a little bit of a taste of what's now happening all along our West coast, from California to Alaska. Is this REALLY the legacy and the planet that we want to leave our children? How long will it be until all of this comes home?
AP, Jan 12, 2016: “It was pretty horrifying,” [Seabird biologist David Irons] said… An estimated 8,000 of the black and white birds were found dead on the Whittier beach, said [USGS’s] John Piatt… “That’s unprecedented, that sheer number in one location is off the charts,” he said.
KTVA, Jan 6, 2016: “It’s a major event and it’s difficult to see,” said Kathy Kuletz, the seabird coordinator for Fish and Wildlife. On Wednesday afternoon, Justin Siemens [said] “It’s super crazy. I’ve always seen a little bit of die off… but nothing like this,” [Kuletz] said this has the potential to be the biggest mortality event in the state’s history — numbers could reach more than 100,000.
KTVA, Jan 7, 2016: Carcasses littered beaches for miles outside Whittier… “Scientists tend to get blasé about this but this is bigger than I’ve ever seen,” [Irons] said. They know the birds are starving to death, they just don’t know why. “Seabird biologists say seabirds are indicators of the health of the ecosystem. Now they’re dying and that is telling us something.”
Seward City News, Dec 30, 2015: It’s hard to miss the bloody bird carcasses strewn about town… None of this is normal… Alarming numbers of seabird die-offs are also occurring this year from California up the coast to the Gulf of Alaska.
