Nejapa: a deadly channelised flow in El Salvador on 29 October 2020 killed ten people and displaced 60 families

In an earlier post today I highlighted the availability of satellite imagery covering the El Salvador lahar disaster, triggered by Hurricane Ida earlier this month. Whilst sitting in a conference session this morning it occurred to me that the Disaster Charter, which provides satellite images for disaster relief and recovery operation, was also triggered by this event. So I had a quick look at the web page for this triggering …

NASA has released before and after satellite images of the lahars (volcanic debris flows) triggered by Hurricane Ida in El Salvador earlier this month. The final toll of the landslides remains unclear, over 60 is the widely reported statistic. The images are false colour composites collected by the ASTER instrument. These images differentiate between vegetation, which appears as red colours, and bare ground, which appear as a blue-grey colour. Such …

The nature of the landslide disaster in El Salvador caused by Hurricane Ida is now becoming a little clearer. The largest event appears to have happened in the town of Verapaz, where it appears that a debris flow hit and destroyed part of the town. The reported death toll is 16 people, with a further 47 thought to be missing. There are two intriguing aspects to this landslide. The first …

It is becoming clear that Hurricane Ida has wreaked havoc in El Salvador over the last 48 hours, with many landslides. Over 100 people are known to have been killed, with the toll expected to rise over the next few days as more remote areas resume contacts. Intriguingly, the El Salvador news site ElSalvador.com has a report on the disaster here. It reports: “Según los últimos reportes, en Verapaz, en …

In most years in which I have been collecting landslide fatality statistics (since 2002) November has been a month with quite low landslide occurrence. Not this year though – in fact the last few days have been more like the summer monsoon season, with fatal landslides occurring in a wide range of places. Examples include: El Salvador on 6th November, in which the volcanic lahars triggered by Hurricane Ida appear …

On 25th July 2016 a M=6.1 earthquake in the Atacama Desert appears to have triggered large numbers of landslides in the hills near the town of El Salvador, 100 km from the epicentre

My paper on landslide impacts on human life worldwide has just been published in Nature. This post briefly review the results.

Whilst the Attabad landslide continues to be my major blogging preoccupation at the moment (I’m guessing you might have noticed…), of course other landslides continue to occur around the world.  On16th May a slip happened on Nyiragongo volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  The reports suggest that 43 people are likely to have been killed, and a further 1,500 directly affected by this slide.Nyiragongo volcano is active, so this …

The reinsurance giant Munich Re releases annual statistics on the losses from natural catastrophes each year. They released the data for 2009 yesterday, presumably banking on the balance of probabilities that there would be no more major events in the three days left of the year. The release is available here: http://www.munichre.com/en/press/press_releases/2009/2009_12_29_press_release.aspxOverall resultsThe news for 2009 is good, with no disasters causing mass (i.e. >10,000) fatalities. There list of the …