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18 September 2009
Extraordinary! Using a helicopter sledgehammer to clear loose rock from a cliff!
I thought I had seen everything until I saw this video! It is from Norway, showing an extraordinary method for removing a loose rock pillar from a high, steep cliff. The answer is obvious – just hang a 1.8 tonne block on a cable under the helicopter and bash the offending rock with your new sledgehammer. This must take very skillful flying. The most amazing thing is that it worked …
4 September 2009
The Cikangkareng village landslide, Indonesia
As I reported a couple of days ago, the Mw=7.0 earthquake in Indonesia on Wednesday triggered a substantive landslide in the village of Cikangkareng in West Java. This landslide buried ten houses, a mosque and an amusement (video game) arcade with the loss of about 57 lives. AP have today released images of the landslide that are quite interesting. In particular this one: Why is this interesting? Well, first lets …
14 April 2009
A round-up of some recent landslide events
I thought that it was time to provide a round-up of some landslide events from around the world: 1. A narrow escape in AustraliaThanks to Remke van Dam for bringing this one to my attention. This Australian family had a pretty lucky escape last week when a pair of large rocks struck their car (image from here): 2. A road-blocking rockfall in AlaskaThanks to John Fritz for this one. In …
6 April 2009
Cave rockfall in Shropshire, England
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 …
31 March 2009
Yosemite rockfall – seismic signal
Improvements in the quality of seismic monitoring systems, in addition to increases in the numbers of instruments and better processing techniques have meant that in the last few years it has become increasingly common to detect large rockfall events from their seismic signature. A nice example of this occurred this week. On 28th March a large rockfall occurred from Ahwiyah Point near Half Dome in Yosemite. This is a pretty …
Terrific rockfall resource
The Colorado Geological Survey publishes a terrific quarterly newsletter on “all aspects of geology throughout the state of Colorado. The latest edition, which is available online for free from here, focuses on rockfalls. It is a terrific read, with some very interesting articles on how and why rockfalls happen; how they can be detected; mitigation approaches; and a number of case studies. It is illustrated with some great photos as …
5 March 2009
Karst landslide in China
Xinhua is reporting a landslide in Jinjiling Hill in Guilin, Guangxi yesterday that buried several houses and killed four people. Whilst in global terms the event was not huge, the images that Xinhua have published are quite interesting: Xinhua describes the event thus: “…several hundred tonnes of rocks and dirt gushed down from the mountain at about 9:20 p.m. Wednesday. Four workers in charge of a cave-digging project in the …
30 January 2009
Some interesting landslide sites
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 …
24 November 2008
Quarry rockfall in Guangxi
ChinaDaily is carrying the image below of an large rockfall in a former quarry in Fengshan County of Guangxi Province in China: The accompanying report says that the landslide occurred without warning and without an obvious trigger in a long-abandoned quarry. The volume of the landslide is reported to be 21,000 cubic metres. It buried 300m of road, 16 buildings, two tractors, a car and a motorbike. Sadly, five people …
27 October 2008
Rockfall sequence in Yosemite
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 …
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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