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Final Hazards Report

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       Venezuela is known to suffer from many different natural hazards, but the one that causes the most damage and takes the most lives is flooding. Venezuela’s rainy season runs from mid-April to December in which during this period, there is the possibility of some flooding in certain low-lying areas and in some valleys. It is when the heavy rainfall occurs that can happen either during or out of the rainy season that cause severe flooding, landslides, damages to the roads, loss of housing, losses to basic services (food, water, electricity), and of course the loss of many lives. There are two reasons why Venezuela experience so much heavy rain. The first is because Venezuela climate is much warmer and warm air holds more moisture creating heavier rain. The second is heavy rainfall produced from hurricanes. As I have mentioned before in my blog post Extreme Weather , hurricanes are not much of a threat to Venezuela (their capital is largely protected by the Avi...
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                                                                                Coastal Hazards                                   Global warming is causing the mean sea level to rise, which according to Climate.gov , has risen 8–9 inches since 1880. There is very little current information on Venezuela’s coastline because conservationists have a hard time getting statistics and are even prevented by the government from researching threats to local ecosystems. Rising sea levels and coastal erosion have a major impact on the coastline, but there are other contributing factors, and it is the ...
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                                                                                                         Extreme Weather As I mentioned in my last blog, Mass Waste Hazards, Venezuela is subject to heavy rains, especially during rainy season which runs from mid-April to December and even outside of the rainy season. Heavy rainfall is the cause of the majority of their landslides and causes extremely destructive flooding. There have been mudslides in many areas of the country, which have particularly affected shantytowns built on hillsides, leaving many people homeless and their roads damaged and undrivable. Hurricanes do occur near Venezuela but are not actually much of a threat, esp...
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                                                                            Mass Wasting Hazards                                                                 This week I will touch a little on mass wasting ,  also known as mass movement. Mass wasting is when rock and soil fall down a slope causing landslides, mudslides, or rockslides. This happens after another natural hazard has occurred such as an earthquake or heavy rainfall, or it could just simply be because of over steeping and gravity. Venezuela unfortunately is a victim of many landslides. Besides being prone to earthquakes, Venezuela experiences some heavy rainfall seasons (a...
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                                                                                                  Volcanoes                                                                 While Venezuela is surrounded by other countries with volcanoes, they do not have any. In the image above, you can see the surrounding volcanoes but none are located in Venezuela. They do however have something interesting called "mud volcanoes"  and "fumaroles" . I know it is not the same as your average volcano and not nearly as threa...
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  Earthquakes      Last week I touched a little on earthquakes in Venezuela and how being in both the South American and Caribbean plates are causing these earthquakes. It is mostly the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, that is exposed to high seismic hazard. The most catastrophic earthquake occurred on March 26, 1812, on the Bocono fault system  (see map of intensities above). This earthquake caused destruction in both Merida and Caracas, and claimed an estimated 15-20,000 lives. After 1812, there were no destructive earthquakes again until 1853, when the city of Cumana suffered a Tsunami caused by an earthquake. Thankfully, there were no fatalities however there was a lot of destruction to the city.                                              * study  results suggest that at least three seis...
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  Plate Tectonics       Venezuela is on the northern coast of South America, so it falls into two tectonic plate boundaries; the South American plate and the Caribbean plate. The Caribbean plate is an oceanic plate right above the South American plate. The type of plate boundary is a convergent (subduction). The ocean plates sink beneath the continental plate, which causes many natural disasters for Venezuela like Earthquakes and flooding. According to Volcano Discovery, "in 2021, Venezuela was shaken by 7 quakes of magnitude 5.0 or above, 75 quakes between 4.0 and 5.0, 305 quakes between 3.0 and 4.0, and 254 quakes between 2.0 and 3.0. There were also 9 quakes below magnitude 2.0 which people don't normally feel." That's a total of 650 earthquakes in one year! According to Dr. Stephen Hicks, "Venezuela is one of the largest ever recorded earthquakes along the boundary between the Caribbean & South American plates."   Convergent plate boundaries oc...
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