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4 June 2008
Updated: Tangjiashan (Beichuan) dam – a summary of what we know
In the next 24-48 hours the water level at Tangjiashan should reach the spillway and flow should start. I thought therefore that it would be useful to summarise what we know about the site: The landslide dam is 124 metres high; At the time that the over topping begins the lake will have a volume of about 205 million cubic metres of water (UPDATED – the volume is now estimates …
3 June 2008
Tangjiashan – CCTV footage of the channel
There is a very good film (in Chinese) of the Tangjiashan landslide. It is available at: http://video.sina.com.cn/news/c/v/2008-06-03/084017059.shtml The first 6 minutes or so are worth a look. Early in the video they fly a helicopter over Beichuan, which shows the damage caused by landslides there. They then land the helicopter on the landslide mass and the reporter goes into the channel. It appears to be about 5 m wide at …
Tangjiashan – is the dam leaking?
Quite alarming reports started to emerge yesterday that the dam at Tangjiashan might now be “leaking”. For example, a correspondent in Japan, Hideo Ototake, sent me a link to this website, which suggests that a leak started at the bottom of the dam in the afternoon of 1st June. Reuters today is carrying this report, which states that:“The largest “quake lake” formed by China’s most devastating earthquake in decades is …
1 June 2008
Tangjiashan Lake, Beichuan – so now we wait…
Xinhua is reporting that the spillway at Tangjiashan Lake is now finished and that the soldiers constructing it have withdrawn, leaving just a few hardy and brave souls to raise the alarm. First, we must recognise the awesome task that has been accomplished here – 135,500 cubic metres of debris have been shifted to create a channel that 475 m long and “up to” 10 m wide. To do this …
29 May 2008
Two new photographs of the Beichuan area
I came across these two new images, both from AP, of the Beichuan area. The first shows the landslide that struck Beichuan itself. The landslide is on the left side of the image. Note the debris piled up around its edges – the landslide has clearly bulldozed all before it. The second is an alarming image of the work underway on the Tangjiashan landslide dam. The shear scale of the …
NASA imagery of Sichuan landslides
NASA has now released a pair of ASTER images of the earthquake affected area. I should add that it is good to see some imagery of areas beyond Beichuan. These images really do highlight the magnitude of the landslide problem. These images are centred on the Min Jiang river, which is about 150 kilometers from the epicentre of the earthquake. For a non-specialist they look a little odd – technically …
27 May 2008
Updated 28th May: Sichuan landslides dam – alarming video
The BBC is carrying some interesting footage of soldiers creating a channel across a landslide deposit. This can be seen here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7421263.stm The video is at the bottom of the page. It is worth a look. The video shows soldiers digging a channel through what is apparently a landslide deposit. I am not sure which landslide this is or even what the channel is to achieve. It could be that …
26 May 2008
Tangjiashan (Beichuan) Lake – update
China Daily is today reporting that real progress is being made with the lake above Beichuan, which is now known as Tangjiashan Lake: Amid low visibility, a Russian helicopter successfully delivered a large bulldozer and other eight sets of big machineries near the swelling Tangjiashan lake, in order to dig a diverting channel to prevent a flood, said Minister of Water Resources Chen Lei. “I feel relieved this morning as …
25 May 2008
The collapse of landslide dams – the challenge in Sichuan
In view of the ongoing deep concern about the stability of the >30 landslide dams in Sichuan (now known in the press as “quake lakes”), and in particular the one upstream at Beichuan, I thought it might be helpful to provide a brief review of what we know about landslide dams. First, there us a great deal of literature on this topic. For example, Schuster and Costa (1991) detailed 463 …
23 May 2008
New images of Beichuan and its lakes
CCTV has posted the following image of the lake at Beichuan: Meanwhile Reuters have published this image, captioned: “An aerial view of the roofs of houses in earthquake-hit Beichuan, Sichuan province May 20, 2008. The houses, which were originally built next to a reservoir, were uprooted and floated downriver after water levels started to rise.” I suspect that by reservoir they mean river? AP has this image of the landslides …
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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