I thought a brief follow up email to my previous posts about the Costa Rica earthquake would be useful now that we are five days post the event. So what do we now know? Well, first the final death toll is likely to be about 40, most of whom were killed by landslides. Officially, as of today, 19 bodies have been recovered and 21 more are buried under landslide debris. …

News continues to flow in regarding the impact of the earthquake in Costa Rica. It is increasingly evident that landslides have probably been the major problem, which is unsurprising given the topography and soils. The landslides have clearly caused substantial loss of life and are also hampering rescue operations. The Washington Post is reporting, quite rightly, that there are now concerns about the stability of the slopes in the affected …

At 19:21 UTC (13:21 local time) on 8th January a Magnitude Mw=6.1 earthquake struck Costa Rica. Although this is not a particularly large earthquake, it is certainly substantial enough to have triggered many landslides, especially given that it occurred very close to the surface (the USGS depth estimate is just 4.5 km). Several reports have come in already about fatalities associated with landslides. Confirmed are the deaths of two girls …

In the last few days there have been two landslides that have led to searches in the hope of finding buried victims. The higher profile slide was this one that occurred in the Bukit Antarabangsa suburb of Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) on Saturday (pictures from The Star): This landslide, which has dominated the news in Malaysia over the last few days, killed four people and injured a further 15. One person …

Readers will probably be aware that last week the First World Landslide Forum was held at the United Nations University in Tokyo. This was apparently “a global cooperation platform for all types of organizations from academia, United Nations, governments, private sectors, and individuals which are willing to contribute for landslide and other related earth system risk reduction.”Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend, but two of my colleagues (Nick Rosser and …

The picture of the level of destruction in Pakistan resulting from yesterday’s earthquakes remains slightly confused. The official death toll is now 215 people, but some reports suggest that the true number is about 400 as in smaller villages victims were buried before officials arrived. In terms of landslides, the picture is equally confused, but unverified reports indicate the following: Some reports suggest that a village called Chali Dam in …

At 11:32 UT there was a further earthquake in Balochistan, this time Mw=6.2 at 10 km depth. This is sufficiently large and shallow to cause considerable additional damage, including landslides. Unfortunately, this event is even closer to Ziarat, which seems to have borne the brunt the first time around. The epicentre is at 30.541°N, 67.457°E according to the USGS, which is shown below on Google Earth (click on the image …

News is coming in this morning of moment magnitude = 6.4 earthquake in Balochistan in Pakistan. According to the USGS, the earthquake occurred at 23:09 UT (04:09 local time) at a depth of about 15 km. The USGS have produced this map of the epicentre: Fig. 1: USGS map of the location of the epicentre of the earthquake This produces a map of shaking that looks like this:Fig. 2: USGS …

Prof. ZuYu Chen has today emailed to bring to my attention a special conference session on the geohazards associated with the Wenchuan Earthquake. This will be held at the SinoRock 2009 conference in Hong Kong on 22nd May 2009. It will be followed by a field trip to the earthquake zone. Beichuan New Town landslide. Source: This is Life Blog Papers are due by 15th January 2009. Details of the …

The USGS is reporting today that there was a Mw=5.7 (Xinhua is reporting M=6.1) earthquake in China at 4:30 pm local time yesterday. News reports this morning suggest that 25 people have been killed and a further 100 injured. I wouldn’t normally post on an earthquake of this size as the likelihood of triggering extensive landslides is limited. However, in this case there may be an interesting landslide angle to …