{"id":18993,"date":"2016-06-21T07:43:47","date_gmt":"2016-06-21T07:43:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=18993"},"modified":"2016-06-21T07:43:47","modified_gmt":"2016-06-21T07:43:47","slug":"kumamoto-earthquake-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2016\/06\/21\/kumamoto-earthquake-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Kumamoto earthquake: post-seismic landslides kill at least three, two missing"},"content":{"rendered":"
Kumamoto earthquake: post-seismic landslides<\/h5>\n

One of the most serious concerns about the Kumamoto earthquake<\/a> in Japan was that the timing, shortly before the rainy season, meant that there was high potential for post-seismic landslides.\u00a0 These have frequently proven to be problematic – in essence the first exceptional rainfall after the earthquake tends to drive a spike in landslide activity, with potentially disastrous effects.\u00a0 In the Kumamoto earthquake large numbers of slopes were left in a fragile state<\/a>.\u00a0 Yesterday, heavy rainfall across the prefecture triggered extensive landslides and flooding.\u00a0 The Asahi Shimbun<\/a> has a summary of known losses so far:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. In Kamiamakusa a 92-year-old man was killed in his house by a landslide.<\/li>\n
  2. In Uto two houses were buried, leaving one man dead and a woman missing.<\/li>\n
  3. In Kumamoto city two people were trapped by a landslide in their home.\u00a0 One has been confirmed dead, the other is missing<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    There was also a flood-related death – a 79-year-old man who fell into a drainage ditch and drowned in Kosa.<\/p>\n

    The Japan Meteorological Agency provides a real time landslide risk map.\u00a0 This is how it looked yesterday (via Robert Speta and Twitter<\/a>):-<\/p>\n

    \"Kumamtot

    Kumamoto earthquake – landslide risk map for 20th June from the Japan Meteorological Agency<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

    .<\/p>\n

    And again this morning (direct from the Japan Meteorological Agency website<\/a>):-<\/p>\n

    \"Kumamoto

    Landslide risk map for the Kumamoto Earthquake zone on 21st June via the Japan Meteorological Agency<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

    .<\/p>\n

    The agency also provide precipitation data online<\/a>, which makes sobering reading.\u00a0 This is the record for the Kumamoto weather station<\/a>, based on hourly records:<\/p>\n

    \"Kumamoto

    Precipitation data for the Kumamoto weather station, data via the Japan Meteorological Agency<\/a>. The grey line is hourly precipitation (right hand axis), the solid line the cumulative rainfall since 00:00 on 20th June 2016 (left hand axis)<\/p><\/div>\n

    .<\/p>\n

    Rainfall will have been very variable across the region, but in Kumamoto itself the impact seems to have been a short burst of extremely intense rainfall – 89 mm fell in a single hour.\u00a0 Sadly this occurred late in the evening, when people are least likely to be able to see or even hear a landslide coming.\u00a0 Kosa<\/a>, mentioned above, is even worse:-<\/p>\n

    \"Kumamoto

    Precipitation data for the Kosa weather station, data via the Japan Meteorological Agency<\/a>. The grey line is hourly precipitation (right hand axis), the solid line the cumulative rainfall since 00:00 on 20th June 2016 (left hand axis)<\/p><\/div>\n

    .<\/p>\n

    In this case the maximum hourly precipitation was a staggering 123.5 mm.\u00a0 Again the most intense rainfall arrived in a short duration, very high intensity burst with devastating consequences.\u00a0 This is one of the landslides in Uto:<\/p>\n

    \"Kumamoto

    A landslide in Uto, in the Kumaoto Earthquake area, via Jun Kaneko and The Asahi Shimbun<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Heavy rainfall in the last 24 hours has triggered landslides across the Kumamoto Earthquake zone, killing at least three people and leaving two missing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":19008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[23,881,469,361,1137,220],"class_list":["post-18993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-earthquake","tag-east-asia","tag-featured","tag-japan","tag-post-seismic-landslides","tag-precipitation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18993","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=18993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}