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You are browsing the archive for December 2010 - The Landslide Blog.

31 December 2010

The Attabad landslide continues to cause real hardship in Gojal

On 4th January it will be a year since the Attabad landslide blocked the Hunza Valley, generating Gojal Lake and generating real hardship amongst the local population.  Of course we are now in mid-winter and the lake has frozen, adding further to the hardship of the local people.  The Pamir Times has been providing coverage of the ongoing tribulations of the local people: Frozen boats on Attabad lake People walking …

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23 December 2010

Reports of landslides in California and Colombia

News reports coming out of Colombia this morning suggest that there has been yet another large landslide in that battered country. Colombia Reports is carrying a story that a landslide occurred yesterday in Santander Province in the north of the country. The landslide is reported to have struck a small hamlet between Rionegro and El Playon, destroying the a number of houses and reportedly burying 20 people.

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22 December 2010

Book review – The Planet in a Pebble

A couple of months I was approached by the publisher of this book, Oxford  University Press, to ask if I would like a review copy and was intrigued.  The premise of the book is remarkable – that it is possible to write an engaging popular science book based around the geology of a single pebble.  And not an obviously fascinating pebble either – this is a piece of apparently dull, …

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21 December 2010

Community-based landslide warning systems

This post features the development of community-based landslide warning systems in less developed countries, using an example by way of an illustration. There is also a short consideration of the current European and US weather in the context of climate change.

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19 December 2010

The outcome of a study of the Kolontar Tailings Dam failure

Regular readers will remember that I covered in a number of posts the tailings dam failure at Kolontar in Hungary, which flooded a town with bauxite waste with fatal consequences.  At the time we tried to “crowd source” an interpretation of what had happened, and as a result we speculated that the failure might have resulted from a foundation failure of the dam caused by high pore pressures, which led …

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18 December 2010

The cost of reconstruction after the Attabad landslide

Whilst it has dropped from the news during the winter period, the Attabad landslide crisis in Pakistan rumbles on, with dire consequences for the population on the north side of the barrier.  In the next few days the high passes into China will close again, rendering the population of Gojal isolated once again.  The Pamir Times featured an article a few days ago highlighting how tough conditions are once again: …

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17 December 2010

AGU Day 4: Debris flows and the Station Fire [improved in light of comments from Susan Cannon Cannon]

NB the text below has been updated to reflect some very helpful comments from Susan Cannon.  Genuine thanks to her for her help. The AGU Fall meeting continues like an unstoppable rhino, with a dizzying amount of sessions and a rapidly developing sense that my brain has become full.  However, I will highlight here just two talks yesterday from the public communication of natural hazards session, both about the potential …

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15 December 2010

Why you need to check the bearing capacity – the Waikato crane accident video

Last week an extraordinary accident occurred to a 200 tonne crane in New Zealand when the embankment on which it was standing slipped. This posy presents the video of the event and briefly explores what happened.

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14 December 2010

AGU Fall meeting day 1 round up

So here is a round up of a pretty busy first day of the meeting. I started in the Haiti session – I  have already blogged on that. After coffee I moved on to a session on geophysical hazards and social/ecological vulnerabilities. There was some great material presented there, but as is so often the case with these types of sessions it was slightly depressing to realise just how far …

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13 December 2010

AGU Fall Meeting – Haiti earthquake session

The AGU Fall meeting started with a bang this morning with a 2 hour session on the Haiti earthquake. I am going to have a go at blogging live from the session using my iPad, so here goes. I am going to be careful to be general about what the speakers are saying so as not to compromise potential publications from them. First up is Eric Calais, who is now …

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