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

Far out in the South Atlantic, more than 2,500km from the coast of South Africa, Bouvet Island is the loneliest chunk of land on Earth. With the exception of a few tiny rocks just offshore, its nearest neighbour is Antarctica, 1,750km to the south. Despite being so remote, and totally uninhabited¹, it is covered by some beautiful high-resolution imagery.

Bouvet Island is a dependency of Norway, although it was discovered by (and named after) a Frenchman, Jean Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier, in 1739. It’s a volcanic island, almost entirely covered by snow and ice — you can make out the central crater surrounded by cloud-covered peaks, with the highest, Olavtoppen, casting a shadow from the northeast.

Landing here is a very tricky prospect, unless your ship’s equipment includes a helicopter: the coastline mainly consists of high cliffs, with stormy seas foaming at the base and carving out sheer stacks of rock. In places, glaciers tumble over the edge in jagged blocks of ice, while submerged rocks lie in wait for unwary sailors. It’s no surprise that the island remains uninhabited, although a group of hardy Norwegians did spend a whole month there in the 1920s, confirming the nation’s claim on the island.

It seems Bouvet is still volcanically active. During the 1950s, an eruption on the west coast created a low shelf of lava — just about the only convenient flat spot on the island. The Norwegian Polar Institute installed a research station there in 1994 for use during field trips to the island, but by 2007 (and on Google’s pictures) no trace of it remained. The official story is that an earthquake caused a landslide that swept the portable building away — or broke the guy lines that anchored it, allowing gales to blow it into the sea — but bearing in mind that Bouvet Island was the setting for the 2004 film Alien vs Predator, the real explanation seems obvious…

One final mystery: can anyone tell us why, according to the map at Wikipedia, this headland is called Cape Circumcision?

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.

There seems to be a phenomenon occurring all around the world: Giant ships have been sneaking quietly out of the shipyard, going just out the sight of their owners, turning onto their sides and taking a little siesta.

The Mediterranean Sky has been resting off the coast of Greece since early in 2003. We’re not sure if and when she’ll be returning to work, as most of her hull has rusted through.

However, the fact that her lifeboats are still intact (not salvaged as one would suspect) could mean that she is just waiting for someone to come and rouse her from her slumber. There’s a rumor going around that this old girl had some financial problems back in 1997. – Perhaps that is the reason she’s being all lazy, lying around doing nothing?

We’ve seen this sort of reckless abandonment before, so we know this little nap taker isn’t an isolated issue. See for yourself the beginnings of an international problem! What would happen if any old ship just decided to lay up in the shallows? Catastrophe!

To further investigate this crisis of sleeping/deep sleeping ships, check out some of our previous coverage: Shipwreck, Key Largo, More Shipwrecks, Iraqi Shipwrecks, Shipwreck! and Saharan Shipwrecks.

Update: RobK points out another sleeping beauty, this time its the World Discoverer in the Solomon Islands.

Can you find any more? Post the link in the comments and we’ll see how many of these dosing giants we can find!

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.