2 March 2015

Gazost: an impressive landslide in the Hautes-Pyrenees

Posted by Dave Petley

Gazost

Gazost is a tiny village located high in the Hautes-Pyrenees region of France (43.031N, 0.007E if you want to find it on Google Earth).  On Friday afternoon a reasonably large and quite mobile landslide removed 150 m of the only access road to the village, leaving the 20 or so inhabitants stranded.  Reports suggest that the landslide occurred after a period of heavy snow in February and then rainfall more recently.   France-3 has a nice gallery of images and a video of the site.  This image provides a nice overview of the landslide:

Gazost

Courtesy of France-3

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This is quite an interesting landslide in that the debris appears to have been quite mobile.  France-3 also has this image of the lower part of the track of the landslide:

Gazost

Courtesy of France-3

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The upper part of the landslide appears to be rotational, with a reasonably large displaced and back-tilted block:

Gazost

Image courtesy of France-3

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Whilst the lower part seems to have been a mobile flow, judging by the materials at the toe:

Gazost

Image courtesy of France-3