21 January 2013
First reports of a large landslide on Mount Cook in New Zealand
Posted by dr-dave
Several newspapers are reporting that a large landslide occurred today on the flanks of Mount Cook. The best report is in The Press, which has an image (below) and a description of the landslide:
“A Department of Conservation spokeswoman from the Mt Cook office said the rockslide happened just after 2.30pm today. “It’s quite massive and I think it has left a scar on the mountain. I haven’t heard of one this big before; not since the one in December 1991.” Rocks fell more than 600 metres down the mountain, she said. She said 13 people were staying at the nearby Plateau Hut, but nobody was injured.”
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Hopefully some better images of this will emerge tomorrow. This appears to be a rock avalanche with quite a large fall height, not unlike (but smaller than) the 1991 event on the same mountain.
Dave Petley is the Wilson Professor of Hazard and Risk in the Department of Geography at Durham University in the United Kingdom. His blog provides a commentary on landslide events occurring worldwide, including the landslides themselves, latest research, and conferences and meetings.
gehendra gurung said on 21 January 2013
from this short report, it looks similar to one that occured in Nepal Annapurna in May 2012. Wee there any record of surface tremour and downstream flood because of this rock fall, like in Nepal Annapurna?
Gehendra
Errol Cavit said on 22 January 2013
A collection of later stories and links at http://rnzaf.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=gotopost&board=general&thread=18006&post=179166
This includes a link to youtube vid from the helicopter doing the extraction from the hut.
Stuart Millis said on 22 January 2013
Some video footage of the site here:
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=s9G6aI49Le0&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Ds9G6aI49Le0&gl=GB