Live like a Beverly Hillbilly in chateau-style mansion
Government scientists have classified 18 US volcanoes as ‘‘very high threat’’ because of what’s been happening inside them and how close they are to people.
The US Geological Survey has updated its volcano threat assessments for the first time since 2005. The danger list is topped by Hawaii’s Kilauea, which has been erupting this year. The others in the top five are Mt St Helens and Mt Rainier in Washington, Alaska’s Redoubt Volcano and California’s Mt Shasta. ‘‘This report may come as a surprise to many, but not to vulcanologists,’’ said Concord University volcano expert Janine Krippner. ‘‘The USA is one of the most active countries in the world when it comes to volcanic activity,’’ she said, noting there have been 120 eruptions in US volcanoes since 1980.
Kilauea is the most active volcano in the United States ‘‘and it’s got a lot of development right on its flanks,’’ said government vulcanologist John Ewert, the report’s chief author. He said Hilo, Hawaii, is probably the biggest city in the United States in a hazard area for a very high threat volcano, Mauna Loa.
Ewert said the threat rankings weren’t about what would blow next, but ‘‘the potential severity’’ of the damage. Eleven of the 18 very high threat volcanoes are in Oregon, Washington and California.
Of the highest threat volcanoes, Washington’s Mt Rainier ‘‘has the highest number of people in the downstream hazard zone,’’ about 300,000 people, said USGS geologist Angie Diefenbach, a report coauthor.
Flagstaff, Arizona, was on the border of the large San Francisco Volcanic Field, which was in the moderate threat level, Ewert said.
Government scientists use two dozen factors to compute an overall threat score for each of the 161 young active volcanoes in the nation. The score is based on the type of volcano, how explosive it can be, how recently it has been active, how frequently it erupts, if there has been seismic activity, how many people live nearby, if evacuations have happened in the past and if eruptions disrupt air traffic.
They are then sorted into five threat levels, ranging from very low to very high.
Denison University vulcanologist Erik Klemetti said the United States is ‘‘sorely deficient in monitoring’’ for many of the socalled Big 18.
‘‘Many of the volcanoes in the Cascades of Oregon and Washington have few, if any, direct monitoring beyond one or two seismometers,’’ Klemetti said. ‘‘Once you move down into the high and moderate threat (volcanoes), it gets even dicier.’’
Because of past activity, Alaska volcanoes tend to have a more extensive monitoring system, said Tom Murray, USGS’s volcano science centre director.
The USGS said a dozen volcanoes have jumped in threat level since 2005. Twenty others dropped in threat level. That includes Salton Buttes, California and Fourpeaked in Alaska. None of the Big 18 changed in overall threat levels, even though 11 had overall threat scores dropping. Threat scores – and levels – change because of better information about the volcanoes, Klemetti said. –AP A hilltop mansion in Bel-Air could become the most expensive home in the United States after going on the market for US$245 million (NZ$375m).
Chartwell, a 4ha estate with formal gardens and an immense main house in the French neoclassical style, belonged to Jerrold Perenchio, a Hollywood TV executive who died last year.
The main residence was built in 1933 and featured in the 1960s comedy series The Beverly Hillbillies, about a poor family who strike oil and move to California. Perenchio bought it, along with three adjacent parcels of land, in 1986 and restyled it to evoke an 18th-century chateau.
Henry Cisneros, of Univision, described him as the walking embodiment of Tinseltown. He represented artists including Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor and Glen Campbell, and promoted the ‘‘Fight of the Century’’ between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in 1971.
He made some of the most successful television shows of the 1970s, and helped to finance films such as This is Spinal Tap, Blade Runner and Driving Miss Daisy. He became chairman and chief executive of Univision, a Spanish-language media empire, turning his initial US$33 million investment in 1992 into US$1.1 billion when he sold the company 15 years later.
He died of lung cancer aged 86 in the house in May last year, but not before bequeathing an art collection valued at US$500m and including works by Degas, Monet, Picasso, Manet, Magritte and Cezanne to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
His estate is one of eight homes publicly listed for US$100m or more in a region that is grappling with a homelessness crisis that has driven an estimated 23,000 people to camp each night in Los Angeles’ streets, canyons and riverbeds, the most of any city in the United States.
The new palaces are aimed at homegrown technology tycoons, Middle Eastern princes, Russian oligarchs, Chinese billionaires and anyone else with a fortune to dispose of and a hankering for the outdoor Californian lifestyle, so long as it is within easy reach of Rodeo Drive’s exclusive designer boutiques and Hollywood parties.
Chartwell was on offer last year for US$350m but did not find a buyer.
The record sum spent on a house in or near Los Angeles was set this year when the natural gas tycoon Michael Smith and his wife, Iris, agreed a US$110 million deal for a seven-bedroom beachfront villa in Malibu.