24 March 2020
Tendepo: a major landslide in Tambul-Nebilyer district in Papua New Guinea
Posted by Dave Petley
Tendepo: a major landslide in Tambul-Nebilyer district in Papua New Guinea
On Saturday 21 March 2020 a major landslide occurred at Tendepo in Tambul-Nebilyer district in Papua New Guinea, resulting in 12 fatalities. There is an accessible and useful account of this event on The Watchers website, which notes that the landslide was triggered by ongoing heavy rainfall, with further events considered to be possible in the coming days.
That article includes this image of the landslide:-
Tendepo: the aftermath of the major landslide in Tambul-Nebilyer district in Papua New Guinea on 21 March 2020. Image by Jux Ablis via The Watchers.
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Based upon this image this appears to be reasonably deep-seated, possibly rotational slip in deeply weathered residual soil on a slope that has been deforested. The displaced block appears to have disintegrated to generate a major, probably rapid, earthflow. The mobility of the landslide appears to have been quite high.
This image, from the same article, provides an alternative view of the scar of the landslide:-
Tendepo: the scar of the major landslide in Tambul-Nebilyer district in Papua New Guinea on 21 March 2020. Image by Caligen Giluwe Ice via The Watchers.
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The National (a Papua New Guinea newspaper) has an account of the landslide:-
The landslide, which began around 1 am, also washed away 13 homes, domestic animals and food gardens … “People who were awake at that time heard a big noise and found out it was a landslide,” Yanga said. He said it was the first time for him to witness a landslide destroying lives and properties. “We are shocked at the moment because this is the first time to witness people die like that in our Tendepo tribe,” Yanga said.
Papua New Guinea is no stranger to major landslides – for example, a few years ago I covered in detail the outrageous 2012 Tumbi Quarry landslide, which killed at least 25 people, and more recently the 25 February 2018 Mw=7.5 earthquake triggered many landslides, causing an unknown number of fatalities.
Dave Petley is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hull in the United Kingdom. His blog provides commentary and analysis of landslide events occurring worldwide, including the landslides themselves, latest research, and conferences and meetings.
You are doing a great job of continuing to bring this sort of data to the landslide community. I am thinking in terms of the loss of life and comparing it to that of the virus situation that we are now in. Slovic’s “dread factor” is clearly so different for the two types of events. Locally, very locally, the landslide dread factor is high but on a global scale it is low. In general folk do not dread natural hazards enough to move location. I think it was Ambraseys at IC who first noted this in his “History of Persian Earthquakes “. New Orleans hasn’t gone any where else.
Dear David,
I am involved in designing open pit slopes as well as helping to manage large slope failures in open pits.
Your blog certainly assits us in viewing failure mechanisms, and the causes of these large failures.
We generally do our slope designs using probabalistic methods in order to cater for the variability in the parameters within the rock/soil mass that we are working with,and always try to anticipate what the failure mechnism will look like. This is where your information becomes so handy for us !!! Please continue the great work !!!!