The Los Angeles Times today carries an interesting story about a landslide in Ventura County, to the north of Los Angeles. Ventura County is usually brought into focus by the La Conchita landslide, currently the subject of a court hearing, but in this case the issue is rather different. In the words of the paper: “A patch of land in Ventura County’s section of Los Padres National Forest where the …

Image © http://www.hat.net/. Used with permission The UK news today carries a very sad report of the death of a teenager on a beach in the UK: “Paramedics tried to resuscitate the boy after he was pulled out of the sand at Cefn Sidan beach, near Burry Port in Carmarthenshire, on Sunday evening. The teenager was airlifted to Morriston Hospital in Swansea but doctors there pronounced him dead. The boy …

NOTE: see follow-up blog here, outlining why this landslide is not as large or significant as was initially reported. ——————-Update: ITV have a low res video of the landslide site here. This confirms the general location and shows that the failure is indeed large.——————-Update 2: The BBC now have some good aerial footage of the landslide here. It is slightly intriguing as it appears that the slide is wide but …

Farmers Weekly Interactive carries a rather strange report and some excellent photos of a landslide that occurred near to Widnes in NW England on 29th February: “Tractor Driver James Fletcher who works for Chester-based contractor Mike Harley, had a lucky esacpe when the field he was ploughing gave way beneath him. He was on the final run of a sloping field near Alvaney, Widnes, when the bank he was on …

In the last week or so there have been two contrasting examples of landslides that demonstrate the poor relationship between size and impact. First, there was this rather interesting and quite large rock avalanche in Aoraki-Mount Cook National Park, New Zealand: The 13th January 2008 Aoraki-Mt Cook landslide Picture from: New Zealand Herald There is a really nice set of photos in Flash form on the New Zealand Herald website …