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14 October 2009
Teachers First presentation on the hazards associated with the Wenchuan (Sichuan) earthquake
This is a 45 minute presentation that I gave today at a seminar for sixth form (High School) teachers on the impact of the Wenchuan (Sichuan) Earthquake in May 2008. You should be able to view or download the presentation below. Please feel free to use it as appropriate for educational purposes, but please acknowledge me. Teachers First Talk 14th October 2009 http://www.authorstream.com/player/player.swf?p=254450_633911254812360000 See more presentations by Dr_Dave | Upload …
1 September 2009
A video of a river bank failure
The BBC News website has a short video showing the effects of heavy rainfall in Southern China in mid August. Most notable is a pretty remarkable piece of footage of buildings sliding down a river bank and into the torrents below. You can view it here.
10 August 2009
A dreadful weekend of landslides
The last few days have been a dreadful period for landslides. I really cannot cover all that has happened in enough detail, so all I can do is to outline the main events: 1. Rotorua rockfall, New ZealandActually the period started with a very lucky escape in New Zealand on Thursday when a rockfall on a slope under maintenance crushed a car with two passengers. Both were trapped but were …
7 August 2009
Update – emergency evacuations below the Dadu River landslide in China
The Chinese language website www.scol.com.cn has some images of the area upstream of the landslide dam at Dadu here. This also links to what appears to be a Chinese language bulletin board here in which people are posting images of the situation. If this is as it seems then this area has serious problems. although reports do seem to indicate that the river is not completely blocked. For example, this …
Valley blocking landslide in China
The web site China.org.cn is reporting a major valley blocking landslide on the Dadu River in Sichuan: “A massive landslide in southwest China’s Sichuan Province has killed at least one person and injured 19 others, local officials said Friday morning. The landslide, which occurred at around 11:30 p.m. Thursday in Shunhe Township of Hanyuan County, also blocked a major local river, leaving six local residents stranded, said officials from the …
2 August 2009
The low level of NH hurricanes and typhoons in summer 2009
One of the reasons that the northern hemisphere summer is essentially the global landslide season is that landfalling tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) represent a rather efficient way of triggering slope failures. This is especially the case in the Caribbean, Taiwan, Japan, SE and S China, the Philippines and Vietnam. Typhoon rain is astonishing to experience for the first time – peak intensities of 100 mm per hour are not …
29 July 2009
Landslide-induced train accident in China
The landslide misery in China continues, despite the strange lack of typhoons to date this summer. The latest incident occurred in Liuzhou City of Guangxi Province when a train struck a landslide and derailed. According to Xinhua four people were killed and 50 others were injured, at least ten of whom were seriously hurt. Xinhua has published a photograph of the aftermath of the incident: Thus it appears that the …
26 July 2009
Two recent landslides at hydroelectric sites in China
In the past week China has suffered two rather extraordinary landslide accidents at hydroelectric plants. The first occurred an 20th July 2009 near to the Xiaowan hydroelectric power station in Yunnan province. The dam, shown in the artist’s impression below, will apparently be the world’s tallest arched dam, standing 292 m high when finished. It is still under construction, with the first turbine expected to be operational later this year: …
30 June 2009
Three new landslide / debris flow videos
Thanks to Lynn Highland at the USGS for drawing my attention to this video of a debris flow in Costa Rica: This is a slightly strange event. It occurred on the Sarapiqui River in Costa Rica after the 16th January 2009 Cinchona earthquake. It is not all clear why the earthquake should have triggered such a debris flow given that there was no rainfall, but a suggestion is that there …
23 June 2009
Chongqing landslide rescue update – 23rd June
Xinhua has a video report about the ongoing rescue attempts at the Chongqing landslide site. The report suggests that remotely sensed imagery allowed a number of locations in which the crags in the head scar area were found to be unstable and threatening the rescue teams. To this end, two artillery pieces were brought in and shells were fired at the crags to try to dislodge the unstable sections. This …
Dave Petley is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hull in the United Kingdom. His blog provides commentary and analysis of landslide events occurring worldwide, including the landslides themselves, latest research, and conferences and meetings.
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