{"id":15013,"date":"2015-05-02T08:51:39","date_gmt":"2015-05-02T08:51:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=15013"},"modified":"2015-05-02T08:51:39","modified_gmt":"2015-05-02T08:51:39","slug":"gorkha-earthquake-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2015\/05\/02\/gorkha-earthquake-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Gorkha Earthquake – the slowly emerging landslide picture"},"content":{"rendered":"
Gorkha Earthquake<\/h5>\n

The official name for the earthquake in Nepal a week ago is now the Gorkha Earthquake.\u00a0 The casualty count slowly continues to rise – 6659 fatalities at the latest count, but this is likely to rise significantly in the coming days. \u00a0 We are slowly getting a better understanding of the earthquake and its impacts, although the picture in the rural districts remains worryingly unclear.\u00a0 My sense is that we are now starting to get information about rural settlements on the major highways, but the situation in the many communities away from the main roads (which is the vast majority) remains unclear.<\/p>\n

Concentrating on landslides, which is the focus of this blog, I thought I’d pull together some snippets of information that are now available.\u00a0 This is far from comprehensive though.<\/p>\n

1. The dreadful damage in the Langtang region<\/h5>\n

There have been various reports of the impact of landslides in the Langtang region, a popular trekking area, and I wrote about this earlier in the week<\/a>.\u00a0 Whilst the situation is desperately confused, it appears that there may have been two large rock\/ice avalanches, one affecting Langtang itself and the other, a few days later, destroying Ghotabela. \u00a0 Himali Sherpa<\/a> has posted some images of the destruction in Langtang via Facebook:<\/p>\n

\"Gorkha<\/a>

Himali Sherpa via Facebook<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

It is hard to believe that these will be many survivors from this.\u00a0 It appears that this may have been a rock\/ice avalanche, but information is still scarce.<\/p>\n

2. ICIMOD analysis of valley blocking landslides<\/h5>\n

Meanwhile ICIMOD<\/a> have been leading the analysis of satellite imagery of potential valley-blocking landslides.\u00a0 They have identified a number of large slides<\/a>, although fortunately to date these do not seem on first inspection to be too problematic.\u00a0 Note though that very large areas remain cloud-covered so we are not out of the woods as yet.\u00a0 The largest to date is in a remote area in the mountains:<\/p>\n

\"Gorkha<\/a>

ICIMOD analysis of seismically-induced landslides<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

3. Landslides on the Arniko Highway<\/h5>\n

Meanwhile, Kantipur<\/a> today has an interesting article about efforts to clear the Arniko (sometimes called Araniko) Highway, which is the road that links Kathmandu to Tibet – a vital trade route.\u00a0 It includes this image of landslide damage:<\/p>\n

\"Gorkha<\/a>

Kantipur<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The reports states that:<\/p>\n

It is suspected that scores of people, including some foreigners, visiting Tatopani and around 25 vehicles were buried in landslides triggered by Saturday\u2019s massive earthquake. According to witnesses, scores of people were buried at Miteripul, Chaku, Jhyalebhir, Nayapur, Daklang Paharo and Jhirpu. \u201cTen to fifteen people working at caterings and restaurants in Khasa were buried by landslide at Chaku,\u201d said Shyam Shrestha, who witnessed the tragedy. Some buses, private vehicles and motorcycles were also buried in the area.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bit by bit details are emerging of losses associated with landslides in the Gorkha Earthquake in Nepal. The overall picture remains very unclear though<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":15016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[537],"tags":[23,469,959,66,72],"class_list":["post-15013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-earthquake-induced-landslide","tag-earthquake","tag-featured","tag-landslide-report","tag-nepal","tag-south-asia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}