5 November 2010 04:32 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
With three substantial natural hazard events occurring simultaneously, I thought I would post a round-up of those rapidly-evolving events: 1. Hurricane Tomas As feared, Hurricane Tomas is now bringing heavy rainfall to Haiti. The path of the storm has been somewhat erratic, as the Tropical Storm Risk track map shows. However, the storm is now tracking in a generally north-northwesterly direction, and is likely to pass just to the west of …
Tags: costa rica, Haiti, hurricane, indonesia, lahar, landslide report, pyroclastic flow, volcano
27 October 2010 08:46 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
Indonesia is today trying to deal simultaneously with two substantial natural hazards of a rather different nature. The earthquake on Monday 25th October triggered a localised tsunami in the Mentawai islands, close to the epicentre, the Reuters Alertnet reports killed 108 people and has left a further 502 people missing. The data on the earthquake available on the USGS website suggest that this was a Mw=7.7 event at a depth of …
Tags: earthquake, eruption, indonesia, Mentawai, Merapi, tsunami, volcano
20 September 2010 03:05 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
Regular readers will know that I occasionally highlight a piece of art featuring landslides. This is usually a piece of visual art (such as this and this), but occasionally it is a song or even an installation. This time I thought I’d feature a piece of art by the American artist Jennifer Williams, who paints environmentally-orientated pieces using acrylic on birch panels. Jennifer works mostly in the Pacific Northwest, where …
Tags: artwork, landslides in art
20 May 2010 14:34 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
Whilst the Attabad landslide continues to be my major blogging preoccupation at the moment (I’m guessing you might have noticed…), of course other landslides continue to occur around the world. On16th May a slip happened on Nyiragongo volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The reports suggest that 43 people are likely to have been killed, and a further 1,500 directly affected by this slide.Nyiragongo volcano is active, so this …
Tags: Africa, Congo, lahar, landslide report
11 November 2009 21:58 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
In most years in which I have been collecting landslide fatality statistics (since 2002) November has been a month with quite low landslide occurrence. Not this year though – in fact the last few days have been more like the summer monsoon season, with fatal landslides occurring in a wide range of places. Examples include: El Salvador on 6th November, in which the volcanic lahars triggered by Hurricane Ida appear …
Tags: El Salvador, Ghana, India, indonesia, Italy, landslide report, Tanzania
9 November 2009 20:32 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
The nature of the landslide disaster in El Salvador caused by Hurricane Ida is now becoming a little clearer. The largest event appears to have happened in the town of Verapaz, where it appears that a debris flow hit and destroyed part of the town. The reported death toll is 16 people, with a further 47 thought to be missing. There are two intriguing aspects to this landslide. The first …
Tags: El Salvador, Hurricane Ida, lahar, volcano
10 August 2009 19:30 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
The last few days have been a dreadful period for landslides. I really cannot cover all that has happened in enough detail, so all I can do is to outline the main events: 1. Rotorua rockfall, New ZealandActually the period started with a very lucky escape in New Zealand on Thursday when a rockfall on a slope under maintenance crushed a car with two passengers. Both were trapped but were …
Tags: china, debris flow, India, lahar, landslide report, philippines, sichuan, taiwan, typhoon
5 April 2009 21:39 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
One of the most deadly hurricanes of modern times was Hurricane Mitch, which tracked across Central America in late October 1998. Many of the tens of thousands of victims were killed by landslides. Perhaps the most notable event was a lahar (a volcanic landslide) that swept down from near the summit of Casita volcano in Nicaragua, killing about 2500 people over the course of its 6 km path (and some …
Tags: flank collapse, hurricane, Mitch, Nicaragua, volcano
24 October 2008 08:19 in Uncategorized by Dave Petley
IRIN, the UN Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs, has produced a rather nice video about the impact of lahars (a landslide in comparatively young volcanic materials) in the Philippines. The landslide occurred during Typhoon Durian (known in the Philippines as typhoon Reming) in 2006. Wikipedia image of the track of typhoon Durian (Reming) in 2006. The orange dots indicate the locations at which the typhoon was at its …
Tags: 2006, lahar, landslide impact, philippines, video, volcanic landslide, vulnerability
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