Back in 2008 I dedicated a great deal of space on this blog to the extraordinary efforts by the Chinese Army to draining the landslide lake at Tangjiashan, just above the town of Beichuan, which was created by the May 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake.   These efforts were ultimately successful, but in my visit to the site in Spring 2009 it was clear that a threat remained at the site in the …

NASA have somehow managed to find a gap in the clouds to collect a satellite image of the Zhouqu landslide site.  Readers at the time of the landslide last month will remember that I was wondering about the source of the slides.  Although this image does not give a full answer, it gets us a part of the way there: A zoom into the affected area yields this: The slides …

1. Please vote for a slope monitoring projectOne of the recurrent themes of the IAEH Congress is the growing importance of slope monitoring techniques to provide warning of the development of failure.  One of the most exciting projects is the ALARMS project, led by Prof. Neil Dixon at Loughborough University, which is developing techniques that use acoustic emissions to monitor slope movements.  The project has been entered into an Enterprise …

The end of the month marks the point at which I post the accumulated totals for fatal landslides, based upon the global fatal landslide database that I maintain.  The raw figures for August are stark.  The total number of fatal landslides recorded in the month was 71, resulting in 2,740 fatalities.  This total is of course dominated by the Zhouqu landslide in China, which is reported to have resulted in …

The next few posts will be an attempt to catch up on the things that I missed whilst on vacation in Switzerland last week.  Thanks to the many people who have tipped me off about landslide events.  I will cover Pakistan in another post.1. A large flow in AustriaThanks to Martin Springer for highlighting this one.  On Saturday 21st August a severe storm triggered a 100,000 cubic metre flow in …

Xinhua has this morning dramatically increased estimated loss of life in the landslide at Zhouqu in Gansu Province, China.  The latest toll is 702 known fatalities and a further 1,042 people missing.

The Chinese State TV company has a new report (in Mandarin) that provides aerial footage of the Gansu landslide site. It is clear from the video that there are in fact two slides. The video is available via the link below (I have removed the embedded video as it played automatically): Video available here. The larger of the two slides is shown in this screen capture from the video: Strangely …

Xinhua now reports that the death toll from the Gansu landslide is 127 people, with a further 1,294 people reported to be missing.  So far just 28 people have been rescued alive. The BBC has published an image of the lower part of the slide: Note the water flooding the lower storey of the buildings in the background.

Amidst the appalling tragedies playing out in southern Pakistan and in China, Northwest Pakistan continues to grapple with its own problems.  Unfortunately the problems at Attabad have not gone away as yet, even though the NDMA reports on the situation have now dried up completely. However, the Pamir Times are still on the case, with a somewhat concerning report yesterday that “Three more houses were dismantled in Gulmit Gojal due …

Xinhua has now published an image, apparently taken using a mobile phone, of the landslide in Chengguan town: It is now clear that the landslide affected Zhouqu town, which is shown on the Google Earth image below: Unfortunately, high resolution images are not available on Google Earth for this area.  These two Panoramio photos give a good idea of what the town and adjacent mountains are like: Source Source