6 April 2010
Dust cloud video indicates substantial numbers of landslides from the Baja California earthquake in Mexico
Posted by Dave Petley
The Mw=7.2 earthquake on the Laguna Salada fault in Mexico on Sunday was certainly sufficiently large and shallow (10 km) to generate landslides, and there are areas of mountains that provide enough relief for slides to develop. To date the number of reports of slides is quite limited, but CNN has this amazing amateur footage of the mountains to the south of Mexicali. The huge dust clouds were almost certainly generated by landslides (see below the fold):
http://www.ireport.com/themes/custom/resources/cvplayer/ireport_embed.swf?player=embed&configPath=http://www.ireport.com&playlistId=428979&contentId=428979/0&
It will certainly be interesting to see what these slides look like on the ground, but given the arid environment shallow rockslides may well be a key component.
[…] those from the 2010 Sierra Cucapah earthquake in Baja California, Mexico, which was captured on a youtube video that I posted at the time. Working with colleagues at Durham, most notably John Barlow (who is now at the University of […]