1 November 2009
Another fatal beach rockfall – this time in Spain
Posted by Dave Petley
In August this year a rockfall on a beach in Portugal killed five people and injured four others. Unfortunately the newspapers in the UK are this evening reporting that a similar rockfall occurred today on a beach at Playa de los Gigantes in western Tenerife in Spain, killing a British woman and a local woman. The Telegraph has a report and picture (below) of the incident:
Coastal cliffs unfortunately are prone to erosion and thus to rockfalls. News reports suggest that access to this section of beach had been blocked due to an earlier event. Sadly, many people do not seem to appreciate that rockfalls can occur at any time , including in good weather.
Dave Petley is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hull in the United Kingdom. His blog provides commentary and analysis of landslide events occurring worldwide, including the landslides themselves, latest research, and conferences and meetings.
Dave,Being from North America I am not so up to date on European Geological Surveys – so I have a question. Does Spain look into coastal erosion very much, or is this issue largely ignored?-Roy
I know about a number of projects dealing with coastal erosion and some of them are ongoing, but I am not sure whether the IGME or the IGN have a monitoring system. http://www.uhu.es/jr.vidal/pdf/bookschapters/pdf04.pdfhttp://icce2008.hamburg.baw.de/downloads/intern/Paper/BookOfAbstracts/1282_Serra.pdf
Sir, 4 landslides in Kerala Today. 1 fatality at Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary Idukki District (Ganeshan Muthavan 45 years old). A photograph and a description in Malayalam can be found here http://www.manoramaonline.com/cgi-bin/MMOnline.dll/portal/ep/malayalamContentView.do?contentType=EDITORIAL&programId;=1073753765&articleType;=Malayalam News&contentId;=6216489&tabId;=11&BV;_ID=@@@