{"id":19453,"date":"2016-08-13T07:30:02","date_gmt":"2016-08-13T07:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=19453"},"modified":"2016-08-13T20:34:24","modified_gmt":"2016-08-13T20:34:24","slug":"dzongu-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2016\/08\/13\/dzongu-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Dzongu: a worrying valley blocking landslide in Sikkim, India"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5>Dzongu landslide, Sikkim<\/h5>\n<p>News has emerged in the last 24 hours of a major valley-blocking landslide at Dzongu in Sikkim, northern India.\u00a0 The every-impressive and wonderful <a href=\"http:\/\/savethehills.blogspot.co.nz\/2016\/08\/landslide-dam-in-north-sikkim-on-kanaka.html\">Save the Hills blog has a series of reports and images<\/a>.\u00a0 I won&#8217;t seek to replicate them here.\u00a0 There is some confusion about the timing of the landslide, with suggestions that it occurred on 2nd August.\u00a0 The landslide, which is large, has blocked the Kanaka River completely, and a lake has started to build behind it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ln3fZINno34&amp;feature=youtu.be\">Suvrat Kar pointed out this Youtube video<\/a> of the dust cloud generated by the landslide:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ln3fZINno34?rel=0\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>These images, from Save the Hills, show the situation.\u00a0 This is the landslide scar:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_19457\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-19457\" class=\"size-full wp-image-19457\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2016\/08\/16_08-Sikkim-1-e1471118467274.jpg\" alt=\"Dzongu landslide\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-19457\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Dzongu landslide in Sikkim, via <a href=\"http:\/\/savethehills.blogspot.co.nz\/2016\/08\/landslide-dam-in-north-sikkim-on-kanaka.html\">Save the Hills<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>And this image shows the barrier lake that has developed:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_19460\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-19460\" class=\"size-full wp-image-19460\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2016\/08\/16_08-Sikkim-2-e1471118552155.jpg\" alt=\"Dzongu landslide\" width=\"640\" height=\"465\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-19460\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The barrier lake behind the Dzongu landslide, via <a href=\"http:\/\/savethehills.blogspot.co.nz\/2016\/08\/landslide-dam-in-north-sikkim-on-kanaka.html\">Save the Hills<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ILoveSiliguri\">I Love Siliguri Twitter account<\/a> has posted this image of the lower reaches of the landslide, which gives an idea of the scale of the mass:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_19463\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-19463\" class=\"size-full wp-image-19463\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2016\/08\/16_08-Sikkim-4-e1471119185234.jpg\" alt=\"Dzongu landslide\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-19463\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The lower part of the Dzongu landslide, via <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ILoveSiliguri\">I love Siliguri twitter account<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>Whilst the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/TheDarjeelingChronicle\/photos\/a.318139064990548.1073741827.317888468348941\/723761527761631\/?type=3&amp;theater\">Darjeeling Chronicle<\/a> has this before and after image of the river (I have some doubts as this is quiet all it seems, but replicate it here for imformation):<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_19466\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-19466\" class=\"size-full wp-image-19466\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2016\/08\/16_08-Sikkim-5-e1471119488959.jpg\" alt=\"Dzongu Landslide\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-19466\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The dried up Kanaka River downstream of the Dzongu landslide, via the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/TheDarjeelingChronicle\/photos\/a.318139064990548.1073741827.317888468348941\/723761527761631\/?type=3&amp;theater\">Dareeling Chronicle<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>This is the site of the landslide, via Google Earth:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_19467\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-19467\" class=\"size-full wp-image-19467\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2016\/08\/16_08-Sikkim-6-e1471119664545.jpg\" alt=\"Dzongu landslide\" width=\"640\" height=\"396\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-19467\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Google Earth image of the site of the Dzongu landslide in Sikkim<\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>If this is correct then that vertical extent of the landslide is about 900 metres. Suggestions are that the landslide dam is about 50 m high.<\/p>\n<p>It is really hard to analyse the potential risk from this landslide dam without more information.\u00a0 I hope that there is a rapid assessment underway.\u00a0 In the meantime, there is the potential for a damaging outburst flood, meaning that communities downstream need to be extremely vigilant.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reports have emerged of a large valley-blocking landslide on the Kanaka River in Sikkim, northern India. A large lake has already started to form.<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":19463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[469,5,15,959,979,72],"class_list":["post-19453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-featured","tag-india","tag-landslide-dam","tag-landslide-report","tag-monsoon","tag-south-asia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19453","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=19453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}