2 April 2010

Video of the main seepage point at the Attabad landslide dam

Posted by Dave Petley

(corrected 3rd April)

As I noted yesterday, a new (third) seepage point has appeared on the downstream face of the Attabad landslide dam. A video has been posted on Youtube of the first seepage point. It is worth a view:

Note that water now appears to be flowing into this seepage point under pressure, which is a worry. The volume of water at this seepage point is the largest of the three points. According to Focus the current seepage is:

Location 1: 500 litres per second
Location 2: 40 to 55 litres per second
Location 3: 15 litres per second

Inflow to the lake is about 29,500 litres per second, so this seepage is not really helping with reducing the rate of filling.

The current rate of rise of the lake level is about 40 cm per day. The freeboard is 35.48 metres. In that context, the reported prediction by the Chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority, General Farooq, that the lake would start to spill-over on 17th April is a little perplexing, but to be fair he may well know something that I don’t.