Wow! Big Switzerland Rock Slide Caught On Camera

A huge rock on a Swiss mountain, seconds before it collapsed
it blasted into a valley below.  

Glad nobody was beneath this cliff.

A huge chunk of rock on a Swiss mountain gave way recently, and luckily, geologists were there to film it.

According to the Telegraph UK, (I'm not linking to it because it's got an obnoxious autoplay), geologist had detected signs that a big chunk of the Rock of Mel Niva was about to let go.

A small village far below was evacuated just in case and the geologists set up their cameras.

The rock let go, carving a path through the forest 1,000 feet down the mountain. The rocks missed the village and everything there is OK.

Here's dramatic the video, shot from two angles:

Dramatic Dubai Fire: Metal And Glass Buildings Burn, Too

The massive fire in a 79-floor apartment building
in Dubai Friday.  

You might have seen the dramatic images out of Dubai, but this must have been a nightmare for the residents in this building.

The ironically named Torch Building, a 79-story residential apartment building burst into flames yesterday, and the large file burned for hours, raining debris on the streets below.

The Guardian said the fire appears to have been accidental, but there were some surprising glitches with this fire.

Apparently, fire alarms didn't go off right away. People weren't really aware until somebody in a nearby building called a receptionist in the Torch Building mentioning there was a fire.

It's unclear how many apartment are ruined, but it looks like some of the people who live in the lower floors will be able to get back in pretty soon.

Because of all the debris raining down, neighboring high rise apartment buildings were also evacuated, but those residents were allowed back in.

I haven't heard of many injuries, but you never know. As you might expect, any high rise building fire is very scary, and I imagine, very hard to extinguish.

Here's a CNN video of the scene. Pretty wild:

Horrible Taiwan Plane Crash Caught On Dash Cam

Stills from a dash cam video
of a terrible Taiwan plane crash today.  

Imagine driving down a freeway in a city when from behind the highrises to the left, a plane just misses the buildings, dives down sideways, clips the bridge you're on, then plunges into the river below.

Somebody in Taiwan caught that horrible sight today when a TransAsia flight with 53 passengers and five crew crashed today.  It's all on a dash came video that I've got on the bottom of this post. You'll probably see it all over the news, too.

At least 13 people died and most of the rest of the people on the plane are missing, presumably in the fuselage under the water or swept downstream by the river current.

Some survivors have been pulled from the wreckage.  Reuters says 15 people were rescued. 

One person on the bridge was hurt when the cab he was driving was struck. The plane missed apartment buildings to the left of the highway by just a few feet.

No word on the cause of the crash yet..

Here's the incredible video.

Spectacular Video Of Mexican Volcano Erupting

Watch this Mexican volcano explode dramatically in
the video at the bottom of this post.  

A volcano in Mexico erupted Wednesday and a webcam caught the incredible explosion.

Let's just say we should all be glad nobody was near the Colima volcano when it exploded at about 9:13 a.m. local time Wednesday morning, says Mashable. 

The ash cloud went 13,000 feet into the sky. Luckily winds were blowing the ash away from populated areas, including Puerto Vallarta in southwestern Mexico.

There have been no reports of injuries or serious damage with this. Authorities have been keeping people away from the volcano.

As if anybody in their right minds would want to go near it.

The volcano has been erupting repeatedly in recent weeks, but this was the biggest explosion on Colima during its current round of eruptions.

Experts say Colima will probably continue erupting in the coming days and weeks.

This video of Wednesday's eruption is a good reason to stay away from it, but be totally wowed by it.

Watch:

YIKES! Columbian Fireworks Factory Blows Up

Fireworks factory in Columbia blows up
Watch the scary video in this post.  

It's never a good thing when a fireworks warehouse or fireworks factory blows up.

But it's always exciting, that's for sure. Exciting in a bad way, but exciting.

The latest example comes from Columbia, where this week a fireworks warehouse exploded. REALLY exploded.

So far, there have been reports of only two injuries, but firefighters weren't quite able to get close to the remains of the warehouse yet to check for more victims. Yeah, exploding shells will keep pretty much anyone away.

Below is a video of the fireworks factory in Columbia blowing up. It was taken by a local reporter, who as you can see, was blown off his feet by the first large explosion, and then he tries to hide from the explosions behind a truck

Very scary.



It turns out YouTube is filled with lots of videos of fireworks warehouses exploding, which tells me it happens a bit too often.

The worst was a fireworks building that exploded in the middle of a town in the Netherlands back in May, 2000.

I have no idea why there was a big fireworks factory in the middle of a densely populated residential area. Two dozen people were killed, nearly 1,000 were injured and 1,200 or so people were left homeless when the explosions leveled large swaths of the community.

Watch:

Kansas City Woman Takes Miley Cyrus Wrecking Ball Too Far

Here's the Kansas City building after a woman
driving a stolen SUV slammed into it.  

You pop culture fanatics out there are, I'm sure familiar with the Miley Cyrus song "Wrecking Ball."  

Well, a woman in Kansas City decided to do Miley one better by becoming a literal wrecking ball.

According to the Associated Press, a woman driving a stolen SUV, a phone glued to her ear, was being chased by police at speeds of up to 80 mph, when she lost control of the vehicle (Duh!) and slammed into a building, which partly collapsed.

Surveillance video that you'll see at the bottom of this post shows the building falling dramatically in a cloud of dust.

The building stored vintage cars, several of which were damaged or destroyed. One plunged to the ground from the second floor of the building.

Police have so far not identified the human wrecking ball, who we will call Miley II.

Miley II was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries, says the AP.

Here's the surveillance video:

Watch This Train Hit A Truck. (Then The Gas Starts Leaking)

Aftermath of that big truck/train crash in Louisiana  

A train got stuck on some railroad tracks in Louisiana Sunday.  

Bad timing, as a train was barreling in from close by and there was no time to stop it.

The result was the dramatic video you see below taken by some people on the road waiting for the train to pass.

According to the Bastrop Daily Enterprise in Louisiana, the truck driver got out of the vehicle before the train hit it. The train derailed, and the engineer and conductor were hospitalized with injuries.

Watch the video below unti the end, because you see something scary: This what cloud of gas coming from the derailed train. The people in the car beat a hasty retreat, which was probably smart.

It was argon gas. Luckily, it's not super, duper toxic, so it wouldn't hurt people unless they breathed a lot of it. Even luckier, the train did not have oil cars.

The mayor of Mer Rouge, where the crash occured, said oil cars go through ten times a day. Had one of those derailed, there would have been an explosion, fire and fatalities, said another local paper, the News Star. in Monroe, Louisiana.

I'm glad we don't have a scary video of an oil train explosion. This one is scary enough:

Scary Video: Watch Bicyclist Almost Get Smushed By Car, Truck

Watch what happens in this scary traffic crash.  

I don't know if this guy was lucky or unlucky, but a surveillance camera in Russia captured a collision between a truck and a car at an intersection.

A bicyclists passing through at the time comes inches from being run over by both vehicles. Talk about threading the needle!

Watch this guy's escape:

Dramatic Video: Hikers Caught On Volcano During Deadly Eruption

Ash from an abruptly erupting Japanese volcano
closes in on hikers Saturday.  

UPDATE: Sadly, word has spread since I wrote this post Saturday morning that about 30 hikers died when they were overtaken by ash on the slopes of this volcano.

Very sad, indeed.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION:

The Japanese volcano Mount Ontake erupted today, and some people were too close when it belched a massive cloud of ash.

At least eight people have been injured, according to media reports, some of them hikers on the mountain when it blew.

Here's a video of hikers on the volcano trying to escape as the enormous ash cloud mushrooms toward them:

Dash Cam Vid: Crash, Enormous Explosion, Then Watch What Truck Driver Did

The explosion that almost killed a grandmother
and granddaughter, except for the actions of a truck driver.  

From Jalopnik, we have an amazing dash cam video from a truck in Mississippi (in the video below, the time stamp is wrong, it happened in recent days)

Up ahead, a Lincoln Town Car t-bones tractor trailer, which explodes and engulfs the Town Car in flames.

The truck driver whose dash cam is rolling gets out with an itty bitty fire extinguisher, but runs to the flaming car anyway.

He suppresses the flames barely enough to get a woman with a broken leg out of the car, and her one year old granddaughter.

The baby is pretty much fine, the grandmother is in the hospital nursing the broken leg, but it's amazing anyone survived this.

Watch this incredible drama:

Swallowed by the Earth in China

Here's some dramatic footage that's been making the rounds today. It's enough to make you question the ground you walk on.

A sinkhole opened up beneath some buildings in a Chinese city. This is how it went down, literally:

Dramatic Video: Another Reason Running Red Lights if Bad

I first saw this video in the Gothamist, and it goes to show you what happens when you're a moron and you race down a busy city or suburban street and run a red light.

Miraculously, according to the Gothamist, nobody was seriously hurt. I felt bad for the person the moron hit. He or she was minding their own business, slowly going through an intersection and heeding a green light, and WHAM!

I don't feel as sorry for the red light runner. Haven't heard if he's been charged or not. The video was recorded by one of those red light monitors that take photos of scofflaw cars and send the owners a ticket.

According to New Jersey officials, this was recored at around 5:30 a.m. May 29. What, moron was late for work? Now he's really late.

At least stupid guy was smart enough to wear a seat belt apparently, as you can see in the video he stayed in the driver's seat despite......well, watch.  Then there's controversy, see below the video.




Of course, the video was released to show that running red lights is bad, which is true. But these red light monitors can also be regarded as money grabs.  Some cities are said to set their red light switches so there's no time for a motorist who starts through with a green to get to the other side before it turns red.

Then they are ticketed. Traffic standards call for a certain length of time where the light is yellow, but some cities shorten it, maybe to get money. One woman said she got a ticket in New Jersey because for one fifth of a second, her car was still in the intersection when the light turned red.

So I'll guess we need to begin stopping at green lights, too?