{"id":67494,"date":"2024-04-23T16:15:32","date_gmt":"2024-04-23T21:15:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67494"},"modified":"2024-04-23T16:15:32","modified_gmt":"2024-04-23T21:15:32","slug":"the-vast-ravines-swallowing-whole-neighbourhoods-around-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67494","title":{"rendered":"The vast ravines swallowing whole neighbourhoods around the world"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The vast ravines swallowing whole neighbourhoods around the world<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This was once a bustling street in Buriticupu, a city in north-east Brazil.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Now it is a vast chasm 80m deep – a 20-storey building could fit inside it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Canyons like this are known locally as \u201cvo\u00e7oroca\u201d or \u201ctorn land\u201d in the indigenous Tupi-Guarani language.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The phenomenon is a result of\u00a0gully erosion<\/strong>, one of the most aggressive forms of soil degradation caused by rain and waste water.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And it is advancing at a worrying speed, destroying thousands of homes in Latin America and Africa.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Former police officer Jos\u00e9 Ribamar Silveira was nearly killed when he fell into this gully.<\/p>\n

He got lost as he was driving home from a party one night in May 2023.<\/p>\n

As he turned the car around, the 79-year-old reversed and accelerated backwards. It was dark, there were no warning signs or barriers around the vo\u00e7oroca, and before he knew it, the car – with him inside – plunged into the vast hole.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the car slid, even though it was falling quickly, I thought of my youngest son,\u201d he tells the BBC.<\/p>\n

Baby Gael had turned four months old the day before. \u201cI asked God to protect me so that I could raise my little son,\u201d says Lt Silveira.<\/p>\n

He was knocked unconscious and woke up at the bottom of the ravine three hours later. After a complicated rescue operation and months of convalescence, he can now walk without crutches.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Portrait<\/picture>
Jos\u00e9 Silveira nearly died when he fell into the ravine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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His experience is a vivid example of the risks facing Buriticupu\u2019s 70,000 residents.<\/p>\n

As more gullies appear, there are fears that the city in Maranh\u00e3o state, on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, could be split in two. At 350m above sea level, Buriticupu has about\u00a030 gullies<\/strong>, with the largest two separated by less than 1km.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the authorities don\u2019t contain this, they will meet and form a river,\u201d says Edilea Dutra Pereira, a geologist and professor at the Federal University of Maranh\u00e3o.<\/p>\n

Gullies have been part of the Earth\u2019s geological history for millions of years.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

<\/picture><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The vast ravines swallowing whole neighbourhoods around the world This was once a bustling street in Buriticupu, a city in north-east Brazil. Now it is a vast chasm 80m deep – a 20-storey building could fit inside it. Canyons like this are known locally as \u201cvo\u00e7oroca\u201d or \u201ctorn land\u201d in the indigenous Tupi-Guarani language. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[31167,141,4548,15266,34313],"class_list":["post-67494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-bbc-news","tag-climate-change","tag-geology","tag-rainfall","tag-shin-suzuki"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67495,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67494\/revisions\/67495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}