10 February 2012
Friday fun: a new landslide video and a remarkable escape from a rockfall
Posted by Dave Petley
As a bit of light-hearted relief from the Philippines and Papua New Guinea landslides, here are two interesting landslide items.
First, with a hat-tip to Greg Springer, there is a new landslide video on Youtube. It is another good one (despite the music):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Px-73K_4SU
According to the Youtube page “The landslide occurred summer 2011 in Athens County, Ohio during construction of a new road.”
I will update the ultimate landslide video page in the next few days to include a much larger selection of events.
Second, thanks to Zetica’s twitter feed (@zeticaltd), Metro has the story of a remarkable escape from a car crushed by a boulder (ie. a rockfall) in France:
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/889928-man-survives-after-20-tonne-boulder-drops-through-car-roof
The report states that the victim is expected to make a full recovery.
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.
Thanks for sharing these items, especially the second one that i forwarded to the blog just one day after the event, hoping that my message was not considered as a spam.
May i bring further informations, about the context of this event, that i gave in my original post for the blog and for which the Metro’s report provides no explanation.
The event occurred on a highly vulnerable road (RN 212) in the french Alps. This very frequented road is known to be closed most of the time due to many rockfalls which cause a disruption of the traffic. After an event in July 2011, stakeholders have decided to undertake many mitigation works over two years at a cost amounting to 21€ millions, according to the local report below.
http://alpes.france3.fr/info/gorges-de-l-arly-73–un-conducteur-miracule-72195557.html
In this report the road appears partially cleaned after the event, we can note the presence of nets which were sadly useless in this case.
Reminds me of this incident in 2006 near our USGS offices in Golden, CO – the young man was mountain climbing, and had parked his car on the side of the Clear Creek Canyon road. Luckily he was not in the car, when the rock came down, but un-luckily, the car was a rental, and he had not taken out any insurance on it.
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=218654&f=0&b=0
[…] Un vídeo con una complicada rotura progresiva a medio camino entre un desprendimiento de rocas, un vuelco y un deslizamiento (la geotecnia real se resiste a las etiquetas) descubierto en el imprescindible The Landslide Blog. […]