Thanks to Mauri McSaveney for doing the detective work to track down the location of this slide.  The village in question is located at 29.320 N, 102.726E (put the following into Google Maps: 29.319631, 102.725816).  This is the pre-landslide perspective image from Google Earth: Meanhile Xinhua has a new set of images, of which these two are the best: The community on the right of the second image was very …

The Associated Press Pakistan has a report of a somewhat important development in the Attabad landslide dam story this evening.  The report is of a high level meeting, chaired by the President of Pakistan, which has decided to lower the level of the lake to 30 metres (it is currently 111 metres, implying a drop of about 80 metres from the current level.  This will be achieved through controlled blasting.  …

Long term readers of this blog will know that one of its original purposes was to disseminate the work that I do collating data on fatal landslides worldwide.  As the Attabad situation reduces in its intensity I plan to return to some of those key themes.  So here is a half term report on the occurrence of fatal landslides in 2010. Numbers of landslides:As of the end of 30th June …

Interesting developments at Attabad, as various press reports suggest that the lake level increased substantially once again yesterday.  The Pamir Times for example reports that the lake level went up by 11 inches (28 cm) yesterday; this magnitude of increase is reported elsewhere too.  I have used the data and the graph in the NDMA daily reports to build a dataset of the lake level with time: If these reports …

The situation facing NDMA at Attabad remains very challenging.  They continue to need to manage both an understandably restive displaced population and a dam that has reached some kind of dynamic equilibrium, with no major changes appearing to be occurring.  In addition, the optimum solution for the upstream population (draining of the lake) is at odds with the probable wishes of the downstream population (stabilise the lake in place such …

Alongside the continuing Attabad crisis, here is a summary of the last week in landslide events (in no particular order).  The list is not exhaustive by any account, but these are the stories that caught my eye: 1.The Oliver debris flow in CanadaI covered this event in a post or two earlier in the week.  It is now clear that the trigger was the overtopping and eventual failure (through a …

Several people have emailed to ask why the lake has yet to breach.  Well, I would like to emphasise two things – first, that every landslide is different, so predicting the behaviour of any particular slide is effectively impossible.  Second, there is a peculiarity about the spillway that appears to be delaying the breach event. Regular readers (of which there are now several thousand each day I think – thanks …

Several people have emailed to ask why the lake has yet to breach.  Well, I would like to emphasise two things – first, that every landslide is different, so predicting the behaviour of any particular slide is effectively impossible.  Second, there is a peculiarity about the spillway that appears to be delaying the breach event. Regular readers (of which there are now several thousand each day I think – thanks …

Although all eyes, and increasingly those of the media (which is showing considerable interest in this blog), are on Attabad, other landslides are happening around the world as we enter the rainy season in many landslide prone areas of the Northern Hemisphere.  In the last few days a number of significant landslide events have occurred: 1. A landslide-induced rail crash in China this morning.Xinhua reports that an 8000 cubic metre, …

The water level at Attabad is now within ten metres of the base of the spillway at the saddle, and continues to rise at about 90 to 100 cm per day.  Thus, water flow through the spillway is now about ten days away, or possibly less.  So what will happen when water flow starts?  Regular readers will know that I have been continually pressing the authorities to assume that a …