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 …

Tomorrow (Friday) I am giving a talk at Hazards Day in Manchester for AS/A2 students (year 12 and Year 13 in the UK system). The topic is the hazards associated with the Wenchuan (Sichuan) Earthquake in China. I have uploaded the file below: http://www.authorstream.com/player.swf?p=113874_633633648527967500Uploaded on authorSTREAM by Dr_Dave This talk will be repeated at an event in London on Thursday 4th December.

(In response to requests, I have edited the post to provide some comments on the images) I am in the middle of putting together a presentation on the impact of the Wenchuan Earthquake in China in May and thus have been looking for suitable materials. I stumbled across a fantastic Powerpoint presentation with images of the aftermath of the earthquake – this can be downloaded here. There are a number …

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 …

Reliefweb is this morning carrying a story highlighting grave concerns about the situation in Sichuan in view of recent weather. The article is here. This article appears to have originated from the Jinde charity, who are active in the earthquake affected areas. In a nutshell they are reporting that: Sichuan Province is suffering the most severe rainstorms for a century. They report that since 21st September the city of Jiangyou …

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 …