Two interesting forthcoming conferences to mark significant landslide events: 5 years after the Wenchuan earthquake and 50 years after Vajont

19 people, including 18 children, died yesterday in a landslide in the Yiliang area of Yunnan Province, China

Landslides caused by heavy rainfall have killed at least 27 people in Sikkim, N. India

Images of the Alpine Fault in New Zealand, and of associated landslides in the vicinity of the fault

The Yangtze River has changed colour – suddenly becoming red – in the city of Chongqing. The likely cause is landslides associated with heavy rainfall in the catchment, although exactly where this occurred is not clear.

A video of the immediate aftermath of the Yunnan earthquake sequence in China on Friday. Landslides are clearly a major cause of loss of life and of damage.

As you may have guessed I have been on holiday! Anyway, normal service is now resumed. Early this morning Southwest China was shaken by four small earthquakes.  Usually events of this magnitude – 5.6, 4.9, 5.6 and 4.8 (shown using a USGS screenshot above) – would not be sufficiently large to be worth reporting.  Surprisingly though they appear to have caused considerable damage.  Xinhua is currently report 50 fatalities and …

Reports are emerging that this morning’s two small earthquakes in Afghanistan triggered a landslide that may have buried 70 people

An EERI report is now available on the Sikkim earthquake. Landslides caused immense damage, but are absent from the leassons learnt!

Initial news of landslides triggered by the earhquake in the Philippines this morning. At the moment the loss data is dominated by the effects of two slides.