10 April 2015

Sumner road drone footage and two other new landslide videos

Posted by Dave Petley

Sumner road drone footage

One of the most seriously affected areas in the 2010-2011 Christchurch earthquake sequence was Evans Pass, a road that went over the hills at the back of the town of Sumner.  This road was seriously affected by rockfalls and has remained closed since.  This image, from the GNS Science reconnaissance report for the February 2011 earthquake, shows the level of damage that was suffered by the roads in the hills around Sumner:

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A new video has appeared on Youtube showing the current state of Evans Pass above Sumner, collected by an amateur photographer.  It is pretty interesting:

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This road is expected to reopen in 2017 or 2018, but it is clear that there is a great deal of work to do first.  Interestingly, the road has suffered from the effects of landslides on both the slopes above and the slopes below the road level.  It is also clear that the walkers (who probably should not have been on the road) did not like being videoed by a drone!

A house collapse from a landslide in India

A belt of unseasonal weather in India and Pakistan has generated heavy rainfall, floods and landslides in recent days.  In Doda, a house collapsed due to a landslide:

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I’m not sure why they needed to show it so many times though!

An interesting roadside landslide in Greece

This one is quite interesting.  The associated text says “It was the time my father was driving on that road to get home when the first small rock with the first dust came down in front of his car !!
He managed to pass that point unharmed and then he called to tell me what just happened me so i grabbed my camera and headed to this point where this LANDSLIDE happened!!”

The real action happens at about 3 minutes 30 seconds, although the run up to the main collapse is quite cool too:

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The same videographer recorded the aftermath the next day:

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