Xinhua and CCTV have published updates on the Chongqing landslide rescue. The picture is looking increasingly grim given that the estimated survival time of the miners was five to seven days, and it is now a week since the landslide. Highlights of the reports are as follows: Drilling continues but to date no signs of life have been detected. Drilling (or is this tunnel construction – see below) is only …

The British newspapers are reporting that overnight a rockfall occurred in Hermitage Cave near to Bridgnorth in Shropshire, England. This is news because at the time there was a group of teenagers camping in the cave. Sadly, one of them was killed and another was badly injured. These caves are old dwellings cut into the Bridgnorth Sandstone (see image below from here): The caves used to be much larger but …

I thought that it was high time to post a summary of some interesting landslide sites: Aowanda landslideThere is an interesting youtube video of a smallish progressive rockslide occurring at Aowanda in Taiwan here. It should also be visible below: Not quite as dramatic as some others, but useful nonetheless. Five disastrous landslides that changed the Canadian LandscapeThere is quite a nice non-scientific piece here that describes in non-technical language …

It now appears that there are two videos of the Guatemala landslide. The second one, which is not as clear as the original, has appeared on the Telediaro 3 web site. It can be viewed here: http://www.telediario.com.gt/index.php?id=15366&tim;=# Meanwhile, there remains considerable uncertainty as to the number of victims (we may never know for certain I suspect), whilst speculation is intensifying regarding the cause. Given the clear size of the landslide …

Geology.com has a spectacular sequence of images of a rockfall in progress in Yosemite National Park that are well worth a look. The images (which are explicitly copyrighted, so I have not reproduced them here) were collected by a well-known photographer, Herb Dunn, in the canyon of the Merced River. The pictures show a fall from what appears to be a previously active rockfall scar. Below the scar there is …

The newswires are providing early reports of a terrible rockslide at Deweka (also reported as Bekheit and Manshiyet Nasron) on the outskirts of Cairo in Egypt. The slide appears to be a rather strange failure of a rock slope, releasing huge boulders that have buried several (and possibly many) buildings. This Al Jazeera post contains a very useful report and also has this image of the site: They are reporting …

In 2006 Hans Rudolf Keusen of Geotest raised concerns that a large pillar on the Eiger mountain in Switzerland had become unstable. Over the next few weeks the pillar did indeed progressively fail, providing some amazing images of a large rockfall in action (Fig 1): Figure 1: AP image entitled: On July 13, 2006, masses of rock fell down from Eiger, near Grindelwald. The event came after days of warnings …

I thought it would be useful to summarise the key issues / threats associated with landslides in the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake that I can see at the moment: Delayed landslides from the main earthquake: there is some evidence that there can be a substantial delay between the earthquake and occurrence of large-scale landslides. This is because: i) in some cases pore pressures in slopes take some days to …

As today is the 105th anniversary of the Frank Landslide in Canada, it seems appropriate to revisit this most interesting event. The town of Frank is located at about 49 degrees 35 minutes North and 114 degrees 24 minutes West at an elevation of about 1300 m in Alberta, Canada. The town on the back of coal deposits at the foot of Turtle Mountain to the west of the town …