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8 August 2010
Update on the Pakistan floods: 8th August 2010
The Indus flood wave is continuing to flow steadily southwards across the country. The annotated WHO flood map below, from my earlier post, is for reference in terms of the locations of the hydrograph stations: The Pakmet hydrograph data shows that the water level at Taunsa is now declining markedly, although it remains in the defined “high” flood category: Downstream at Guddu, the discharge has been rising, although it should …
6 August 2010
Update on the Pakistan floods: 6th August 2010
The flood wave in Pakistan continues to travel down the Indus River and is now approaching Sukkur. The authorities are responding with a large-scale evacuation of low-lying communities – The Nation reports that 500,000 people are being relocated but that 1.5 million people are likely to be affected. The latest FFD hydrographs depict the situation very clearly. The locations of the gauging stations are shown on this annotated 2007 OCHA …
5 August 2010
A further update on the Pakistan floods
The media have now cottoned onto the fact that the flood wave is causing destruction downstream from the northwest of Pakistan, an issue that I have been highlighting for some days. The flood waters are certainly abating now in Taunsa, although note that three days after the peak the discharge is still above the “very high” level: Meanwhile, at Guddu the water level is still rising, and is now close …
4 August 2010
Latest update on the flood wave in Pakistan
The flood and landslide disaster in Pakistan continues to play out in slow motion. The recovery operation in the north of the country continues to be hampered by the level of destruction inflicted upon the roads. The Pamir Times yesterday posted some images of the Karakoram Highway north of Gilgit, which serve to show all too well just how difficult the recovery operations are going to be: The areas affected …
2 August 2010
Pakistan floods – the progression of the flood wave down the Indus River
The floods in Pakistan appear to be starting to generate substantial interest in the UK, although this may in part be a result of the perhaps surprising decision of the Pakistan president to travel to London today. Whilst the crisis continues to develop in the north of the country, of equal concern now must be the progression of the flood wave down the Indus River. Of course Pakistan is a …
29 January 2010
New images of the level of destruction in the Cusco area of Peru
The Spanish language blog El Caminerito has been covering the magnitude of the rainfall, flood and landslide disaster in Cusco, Peru. They have put together a very helpful map showing the locations of serious damage: Ver Cusco en Emergencia en un mapa más grande The scale of the disaster, which is still being ignored by the western media in favour of coverage of the tourists at Machu Picchu, is well-illustrated …
30 September 2009
Debris flow damage from Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan
In addition to visiting the Shiaolin landslide in Taiwan at the weekend, we also managed to visit a couple of other places that had suffered damage during typhoon Morakot. Damage from debris flows and river floods occurred extensively throughout the upland areas of southern Taiwan, as these images show: The government has set aside about US$5 billion for reconstruction. Unfortunately this area is threatened by another typhoon, called Parma:
19 September 2009
Special session on Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan
This afternoon at the Chi-Chi earthquake conference in Taiwan the organiser laid on a special session on the impact of Typhoon Morakot in August. This is of great interest to me, given the impact of the landslides, so I thought I’d give summary of the key points. Apologies for the note form – I have done this Twitter-style! 1. The magnitude of the typhoonFor Taiwan this was an extraordinary event. …
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.
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 …
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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