It’s Island Week 4 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. For about a week.

GSS Reader Reg Coppicus from Canada thinks Isla San Felix might be “the crappiest posting ever”. Fortunately for us, he’s talking military posting – this remote island in the South Pacific, he says, is home to:

an airstrip, some sea birds and nothing else.

Come on Reg, you’re being unfair. Look – there’s plenty to keep the chaps of the Chilean Navy occupied here at the San Felix Naval Air Station, located on one of the attractively named Islas Desventuradas (Unfortunate Islands). As well as the 2km-long runway there are quite a few buildings, some roads, and best of all a tennis court, plus what looks to be some other kind of sports field¹ just to the north. Just as well, considering these rugged islands are some 900km off the coast of Chile and otherwise totally uninhabited.

Indeed, San Felix looks like a throbbing metropolis compared with tiny Malpelo Island, which belongs to Colombia although it is actually slightly closer (360km) to the coast of Panama. Malpelo appears to support just one building² – an army outpost established in 1986. Those long evenings must just fly by.

Because of the minimal human intrusion, Malpelo is an important marine reserve – the largest no-fishing zone in the tropical eastern Pacific. In 2006 it was named as a World Heritage Site by Unesco, which calls it “a ‘reservoir’ for sharks, giant grouper and billfish“. It is a popular destination with shark divers, who apparently find the prospect of immersing themselves with “aggregations of over 200 hammerhead sharks and over 1,000 silky sharks, whale sharks and tuna” appealing…

Read more about the Islas Desventuradas and Malpelo Island at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Reg Coppicus.

High up in the Italian Dolomite mountains, 90km north of Venice, the Vajont Dam was the scene of one of the 20th century’s worst engineering disasters. The tallest dam in the world when it was completed in 1959, at 262m, it was beset with problems from the beginning. On October 9, 1963, before it had even been completely filled, an enormous landslide (the 2km-long scar of which can still be clearly seen) sent 260 million cubic metres of mountainside into the lake behind the dam, causing a wave of water 250 metres high to spill over into the valley below.

The giant wave completely destroyed five villages, killing almost 2,000 people, maybe even more. Strangely, the dam itself was relatively undamaged and still stands today, with the upstream face largely buried beneath the landslide. Although the communities (the largest of which was Longarone) have been rebuilt, they are very different places than before the disaster. Many of the survivors were relocated to a newly built town 35km away, also called Vajont¹, and the valley is now home to many more industries. Apparently this has been a source of controversy in the area: the victims were offered tax breaks by the government to help them rebuild their lives, but many of these privileges ended up being bought from them by large corporations.

Not long after the disaster, it became clear that it had been avoidable. During construction of the dam, cracks and movement of the mountainside were noticed on several occasions, and the owners (the electricity firm SADE) were warned that the geology of the site was unstable. Still they went ahead with filling the lake, even after a smaller landslip occurred, three years before the fatal collapse, which required an artificial gallery to be built before filling could continue. Despite all that emerged, it seems that the firm escaped with fairly minor punishment.

There is lots more information and pictures of the dam as it looks today on this site, and, as ever, at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Andrea Barbarino.

8 years ago today, on 21 September 2001, a huge explosion occurred in the AZF (AZote Fertilisant – nitrogen fertiliser) factory in Toulouse, France. Three hundred tonnes of ammonium nitrates blew up, creating a 200 m wide crater up to 30 m deep.

Steel girders were found 3 km away from the explosion, which itself was heard 80 km away (50 miles).

29 people died as a direct result of the incident, and over 10,000 people were injured – many thousands by the flying glass from the two thirds of the city’s windows that were shattered. Around 40,000 people were also made homeless for several days.

The official enquiry stated that the ammonium nitrate had exploded following “improper handling”, but there were unconfirmed rumours at the time that suggested that this tragedy was actually the result of a terrorist attack.

Just to the east of the crater is a large pixelated area. The Street View imagery isn’t pixellated though, and shows gives a fairly clear view of a factory. I wonder what it is?

There’s more information and theories available at Wikipedia.

Thanks to @KeirClarke.

In Indiana, the local farmers have an apparently long tradition of decorating the roofs of their barns with interesting pictures. I haven’t been able to find much information on the historical reasons why they do this, but the steeply angled roofs mean that the images are pretty clearly visible from ground level – so presumably they make for fairly good advertising hoardings.

There are tons of these decorated roofs all over the Midwestern United States, but today we’ll be limiting ourselves to ones found in Indiana, because otherwise we’d be here forever.

Based purely on the number of roofs that depict cows, I’m going to guess that there are a lot of dairy farmers in Indiana. They’re also pretty big on pigs too.

The number of properties featuring horses is pretty impressive, but there are probably even more depictions of a more modern type of workhorse, the tractor.

You know, I think I’m starting to see some common themes here. Is anyone else getting a farmyard vibe? Oh look, another tractor. Except this time, it says “MAKIN BACON”! Cool.

People do seem to have eventually started to get slightly more adventurous however, as these two roofs demonstrate through their use of “scenery”.

Of course there are occasional properties where the owners have promoted some different species, such as ducks, chickens, and deer.

Actually that’s not all, mustn’t forget the multi-coloured llamas.

It seems that some people have recognised that there isn’t much original work happening in the Indiana roof-art scene, which may explain this excellent bit of Disney copyright infringement.

Presumably this next one was also created in the name of art – unless they really do breed Unicorns round these parts?

For more roof art than you could possibly imagine, check out Ohio Barns.com. Thanks to Adriano and Felippo.

Previously on Google Sightseeing: Happy Magic Rainbow Unicorn.

Sayano–Shushenskaya was – until a recent accident – the largest power plant in Russia, and the sixth largest hydroelectric plant in the world.

The main feature of the power station is a dam 245 m high and over a kilometre long. Construction was completed in 1978, though spring floods caused moderate damage in three of the ten following years. However, the accident on 17 August 2009 was much more serious, with at least 73 people having died, a large oil spill into the river, and severe damage to several turbines and other parts of the facility, leading to a total shutdown.

While some operations could restart in the near future, complete repairs could take 4 years and cost over a billion dollars. Youtube has a video of the accident¹ and English Russia has a couple of sets of photos of the aftermath: 1, 2.

The power station near the dam distributed 6400 MW of power to 2 double sets of lines (clearly visible on the high resolution images) which head north through wide sections of cleared forest before dividing into east and west routes.

The Eastern route heads to the town of Sayanogorsk which is most affected by the loss of power.

Following the cables and pylons north of town they eventually run to one of the world’s largest aluminum smelters. It is unfortunately partially obscured by cloud, but you can zoom in to see trains, storage tanks and assorted industrial buildings.

This smelter consumed up to 30% of the power generated by Sayano–Shushenskaya, and will see a long-term 50% drop in production as limited power can be diverted to it from other sources.