15 November 2021

Landslides from the 14 November 2021 M=6.3 earthquake near to Fin in Iran

Posted by Dave Petley

Landslides from the 14 November 2021 M=6.3 earthquake near to Fin in Iran

At 12:08 UTC on 14 November 2021 a M=6.3 earthquake struck Iran close to the village of Fin, 64 km to the north of Bandar Abbas in Iran.  With a depth of 15 km, this was an event of sufficient magnitude to trigger landslides and damage to structures.  Fortunately, it occurred in an area that is lightly populated, so the losses are likely to be low.

The area affected by the Fin earthquake is mountainous but very arid.  Experience from similar settings (see our work on the 2010 Sierra Cucapah earthquake in Mexico for example – Barlow et al. 2014) suggests that such events will trigger significant numbers of landslides over the area affected.  The arid conditions will mean that these release vast clouds of dust.

Interestingly, a series of videos have emerged on Twitter showing the landslides triggered by this event, posted by Mohammad Mohseni Aref from the University of Potsdam (@MohseniAref).  The most circulated is this one, which is elegant for capturing both the landslides and the lorries rocking on their suspension as the earthquake waves passed through:-

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This is thought to have been taken on the road from Shahid Rajaie port, Bandar Abbas.

There is a similar video from a toll plaza closer to the mountains:

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The locatuon of this point appears to be consistent with the structures at 27.581, 54.249 on Google Earth.  If so this is about 25 km from the USGS epicentre.

This one appears to have been taken from a vehicle travelling towards the mountains:-

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Geno Mountain is at 27.416, 56.144.

Perhaps the most spectacular was taken close to the mountain front, illustrating how even a small collapse can trigger vast amounts of dust:-

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It will be interesting to see the satellite images from this event that should emerge today.  Planet collected an excellent image from before the earthquake yesterday, and typically image this area every day.  However, many of the landslides are likely to be small, so may be difficult to resolve.

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Reference

Barlow, J., Barisin, I., Rosser, N., Petley, D.,  Densmore, A. and Wright, T. 2014. Seismically-induced mass movements and volumetric fluxes resulting from the 2010 Mw = 7.2 earthquake in the Sierra Cucapah, Mexico, Geomorphology, Available online 24 November 2014, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2014.11.012.


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