Genting: a major landslide in Malaysia

Today a major landslide occurred in the Genting Highlands of Malaysia, a popular tourist area.  Fortunately, there are no reports of casualties, although this appears to have been a near miss.  The best image that I have found of the source of the landslide is this one, posted to Twitter by Bernama:-

The major landslide in the Genting Highlands of Malayasia on 6 November 2019. Image posted to Twitter by Bernama.

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The landslide appears to have been quite mobile, as a channelised flow.  Some of the debris has left the channel and flowed down the road:-

The aftermath of the major landslide in the Genting Highlands of Malaysia on 6 November 2019. Images courtesy of Facebook/Germit Singh and Info Roadblock JPJ/POLIS via Today Online.

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News reports suggest that the landslide was triggered three hours into a major rainstorm in the area.  The images suggest that this started as a slip in residual soil that channelised.  The volume of debris has overwhelmed the road – it is not clear to me that there was an appropriate culvert in place. Such landslides are common in tropical areas such as Malaysia, and they are of course very hazardous.  I note also though that the images suggest that the slope may have been modified in places.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this landslide is that one of the surge events was captured on a mobile phone video:

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The extreme mobility of the landslide is clear, and it is interesting that the landslide appears to have occurred as a series of events.  This is not obvious from the morphology of the scar and the deposit.

Google Earth imagery of this site is not particularly good, but this image from 2002 suggests that this was not the first landslide at this location:-

Google Earth imagery from 2002 of the site of the major landslide in the Genting Highlands of Malaysia on 6 November 2019.

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The landslide is at 3.429, 101.787 if you would like to take a look.