Xinhua has this morning dramatically increased estimated loss of life in the landslide at Zhouqu in Gansu Province, China.  The latest toll is 702 known fatalities and a further 1,042 people missing.

The Associated Press Pakistan has a report of a somewhat important development in the Attabad landslide dam story this evening.  The report is of a high level meeting, chaired by the President of Pakistan, which has decided to lower the level of the lake to 30 metres (it is currently 111 metres, implying a drop of about 80 metres from the current level.  This will be achieved through controlled blasting.  …

Long term readers of this blog will know that one of its original purposes was to disseminate the work that I do collating data on fatal landslides worldwide.  As the Attabad situation reduces in its intensity I plan to return to some of those key themes.  So here is a half term report on the occurrence of fatal landslides in 2010. Numbers of landslides:As of the end of 30th June …

Interesting developments at Attabad, as various press reports suggest that the lake level increased substantially once again yesterday.  The Pamir Times for example reports that the lake level went up by 11 inches (28 cm) yesterday; this magnitude of increase is reported elsewhere too.  I have used the data and the graph in the NDMA daily reports to build a dataset of the lake level with time: If these reports …

Several media outlets in Pakistan are reporting that the level of frustration amongst the displaced people at Attabad has reached the point that they have taken the situation into their own hands.  The Pamir Times has a pictorial record of what they have chosen to do – a large group have been working on the banks of the channel in an attempt to widen it.  There is a full gallery …

If you live in the Hunza and Indus valleys, please do not rely upon this blog to provide warnings and up to date information. Using only reliable reports in the media (mostly information from the Pamir Times) and those from NDMA, the following graph shows the reported flow through the spillway at Attabad.  There is a huge caveat here regarding the reliability of the reports.  However, the most recent figure …

The media in Pakistan are reporting that the freeboard is now 2 feet (61 cm).  Assuming that this was taken at the normal measuring time (i.e. 3 pm local time) the freeboard graph looks like this: Jean Schneider, who is on site and flew over the spillway today, reports that overtopping should begin overnight.

Whilst we wait for news from Pakistan, here are two new resources that readers may find useful.  First, NASA have released a new Aster image of the lake site, collected in the last few days.  This is available here, with a link to my blog (thanks to them for this).  The image shows the manner in which the lake has extended in the last few weeks – NASA have helpfully …

It is unfortunate timing that the likely day of overtopping has fallen on a Friday, the holy day in Pakistan, meaning that flow of information is impeded.  As a result I have not yet had an update for today on the lake level.  Jean Schneider of BOKU visited the site yesterday by helicopter and measured the freeboard at 2.25 feet, which is about 70 cm.  I am not sure what …

The combined monitoring effort appears now to be providing consistent measurements of the remaining freeboard, and these are now being used in the media, which is helpful.  As of late last night the reported freeboard was 8.8 feet, which is 2.56 metres.  This provides a freeboard – time graph that looks like this: This suggests that we are still on course for overtopping on about 27th or 28th May, although …