5 March 2012

The impact of a rockfall formed from a 200 tonne boulder

Posted by Dave Petley

The Daily Mail last week featured a remarkable set of images of the aftermath of a rockfall consisting of a boulder, estimated as weighing 200 tonnes, in the village of Tenay, near to Lyon.  The boulder killed a motorist and destroyed a house:

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2109406/200-tonne-boulder-crashes-street-French-village.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

 

The amazing tool that is Google Earth maens that the site can be identified precisely.  This is the Google Streetview image of the house:

And the bluffs (Streetview images are not good at looking iupwards at acute angles):

And finally the Google Earth perspective view, which shows why images taken from above do not indicate rockfall hazard very well: