1 May 2018

Caijiazhuang village: a cracking-sliding landslide that has killed nine people

Posted by Dave Petley

Caijiazhuang village: a cracking-sliding landslide that has killed nine people

Yesterday I highlighted recently published research into the diurnal cycle and its impacts on cracking-sliding landslides on the Loess Plateau in China.  Ironically, the same day an example of such a landslide occurred, on this occasion at Caijiazhuang village in Lishi District of Lyuliang City, in Shanxi Province.  Xinhua has an unusually brief report on the landslide, which notes that:

“Nine people have died in a landslide in north China’s Shanxi Province, local authorities said Monday.  The landslide happened at around 4:57 a.m. Monday in Caijiazhuang village in Lishi District of Lyuliang City, the local publicity department said.”

The Li et al. (2018) research that I featured yesterday noted that these landslides occur preferentially between 10 pm and 5 am, so this landslide fits the pattern.

The Straits Times has a couple of images of the landslide:-

Caijiazhuang

The cracking-sliding landslide at Caijiazhuang in China on 30th April, which killed nine people. Image via The Straits Times.

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On the face of it this appears to meet the description of a cracking-sliding landslide, and the material appears to be loess or something similar.  This image shows the landslide from a different perspective:-

Caijiazhuang

The cracking-sliding landslide at Caijiazhuang in China on 30th April, which killed nine people. Image via The Straits Times.

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The presence of the chimneys suggests that this might have been a brick pit, which in turn might imply that undercutting of the slope might have been a factor in this instability, perhaps.  There are certainly signs of instability in the adjacent slopes, though perhaps not on the scale of this landslide.  Li et al. (2018) found that a very high proportion of these landslides were associated with slope disturbance of some type.

Reference

Li, Y., Mao, J., Xiang, X., and Mo, P. 2018 Factors influencing development of cracking–sliding failures of loess across the eastern Huangtu Plateau of China, Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 18, 1223-1231, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-18-1223-2018.