A very large fatal landslide at Nichke-Sai in Uzgen, Kyrgyzstan yesterday

The village of Nichke-Sai in Uzgen in the Osh region of Kyrgyzstan was struck by a large landslide yesterday.  Reports are somewhat sketchy – the only one in English I can find is on AKIpress – but the indications are that a family of six people were killed.  A local news site, Turmush, has a report in Russian that Google translates well.

According to preliminary data, in the village of Nichke-Sai of the Uzgen District on the site of Top-Zhangak on March 26 a desolate landslide covered one residential building. There were 6 people in the house: the owner, his wife and 4 children.

The site provides a really good image of the landslide, which appears to be both large and mobile:

The large landslide at Nichke-Sai in Uzgen, Kyrgyzstan on 26 March 2017, via Turmush

.

Meanwhile, the AKIpress report includes a view of the upper reaches of the landslide:

The upper reaches of the landslide at Nichke-Sai in Ugen, Kygyzstan, via AKIpress

.

The landslide is interesting given that there is still extensive snow cover.  Note that the scar appears to lie in a steep scar high on the slope, with the slide then entraining a large volume of material downslope.  The material looks to be fine-grained, with no sign of boulders.  Kyrgyzstan is affected by fairly frequent landslides in loess – who can forget this amazing video of a loess landslide from there in May of last year.   I would speculate that this is another such example.

Previous posts on loess landslides:

• The location of the Kyrgyzstan loess landslide, as caught on that amazing video
• Do not miss this: video of a catastrophic landslide in loess in Kyrgyzstan
• The Abe Barek Landslide in Badakhshan, Afghanistan
• Badakhshan landslide in Afghanistan – a loess failure?
• Images of the Shanxi loess landslide
• Yaglidere – a dramatic landslide video from Turkey