Peru has declared a state of emergency in the aftermath of large debris flows in the Chosica region east of Lima that have left at least 8 people dead.

A new paper suggests that in Peru periods of high landslide activity may be associated with earthquakes rather than El Nino induced periods of high precipitation.

A new Youtube video appears to show the aftermath of a very large landslide and breach event in March 2012 in Huaraz, Peru

On Tuesday evening at 11:45 pm Peru suffered a Mw=6.0 earthquake 125 km (80 miles) NNW of Moyobamba in Amazonas.  This is the USGS location on a Google Earth image: The USGS record suggests that this earthquake was very deep – 132 km – which means that such an event would not normally be associated with landslides.  However, the local paper La Republica is reporting that a large section of …

The Spanish language blog El Caminerito has been covering the magnitude of the rainfall, flood and landslide disaster in Cusco, Peru. They have put together a very helpful map showing the locations of serious damage: Ver Cusco en Emergencia en un mapa más grande The scale of the disaster, which is still being ignored by the western media in favour of coverage of the tourists at Machu Picchu, is well-illustrated …

Each year in mid-April we move into the global “landslide season”, when the development of the Northern Hemisphere summer, and the associated weather patterns elsewhere, means that the number of landslides starts to increase dramatically. This is all too clear from the range of landslide events in the last few days, plus the threat of heavy rainfall in the earthquake affected areas of China: 1. Major landslide in PeruA range …

Various Peruvian news agencies, such as Adonde.com, are carrying reports of a large rainfall-triggered landslide on Saturday night / Sunday morning in Peru. This slide, which appears to have occurred in the town of Retamas in Parcoy District of Pataz Province, has reportedly buried a number of houses, killing 13 people. The following perspective Google Earth image of the location suggests that landslides may well be a substantial problem in …

Today is the 38th anniversary of a notable landslide – the Chungar rock avalanche in Peru. This landslide occurred on the banks of Lake Yanahuani (sometime spelt Lake Yanahuin), about 120 km north-east of Lima (see image below): The landslide, which had a volume of about 100,000 cubic metres, is shown on the image below. Unfortunately the Google Earth image resolution is low in this area, but you can see …

Reuters is reporting that at least 10 people have been killed and a further 30 are missing after a landslide struck the gold mining village of Huanchumay, which is situated in a remote part of Carabaya province. They quote a civil defence official, Victor Ibanez, as having said: “We have 10 dead so far and five wounded. We have no accurate data for the missing but are talking about 30 …

I have been pondering the number of large landslide disasters that occurred in the 1960s. This is an initial list that includes the landslide impacts of two of the greatest earthquakes in history and a series of landslides caused by dams and mining.