I am just in the process of putting together my annual collation of fatal landslide statistics for 2008, together with the map of all the landslides, but in the meantime here are the statistics and map for December.

So first the data. I recorded a total of 16 fatal landslides in December, causing 46 fatalities. This is well below the long term average, which 149.8 fatalities. The largest event was the Kainantu Mine landslide in Papua New Guinea on 4th December, which killed 10 people. I guess the highest profile event was the Bukit Antarabangsa landslide near to Kuala Lumpur, which killed five people on 6th December. This has really dominated the news in Malaysia since.

Here is the map. You will see that I have taken the “copyright” statement off to make it more usable. Please do acknowledge this blog if you use it in presentations etc, and please don’t publish it without my permission. Click on the map for a better view:

As mentioned above I will provide a proper commentary for the 2008 dataset in due course (might take a week or two), but in the meantime here is the provisional final map for 2008. As before, click on the map for a better view:

Comments and/or corrections welcome. One of my tasks for this year is to get a better mapping program than Versamap (suggestions welcome)…