{"id":2415,"date":"2010-12-11T04:49:45","date_gmt":"2010-12-11T09:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=2415"},"modified":"2010-12-11T04:49:45","modified_gmt":"2010-12-11T09:49:45","slug":"an-initial-assessment-of-the-bello-landslide-disaster-in-colombia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2010\/12\/11\/an-initial-assessment-of-the-bello-landslide-disaster-in-colombia\/","title":{"rendered":"An initial assessment of the Bello landslide disaster in Colombia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over the course of the week more information has slowly come to light about the causes and nature of the<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2010\/12\/07\/update-on-the-landslide-in-colombia\/\"> Bello<\/a> Landslide in Colombia last weekend.\u00a0 Most helpful is this Youtube video, which provides an overview of the site (and then some fairly harrowing but not graphic images of the rescue operation):<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Video of Colombia landslide devastation: 20 dead, over 100 missing\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Llat1eDyY04?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The Colombian newspaper El Tiempo continues to provide good coverage of the event (in Spanish of course) &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eltiempo.com\/colombia\/antioquia\/hallan-parque-infantil-entre-alud-en-bello_8571280-4\">the latest article is here.<\/a> This reports that the number of victims is thought to be 119, of which 58 bodies have been recovered to date.\u00a0 Interestingly the article notes that the error margin is thought to be plus or minus 20%, and that a large unknown is the number of children who were playing in a playground that was buried in the landslide.<\/p>\n<p>Based on the video above, and with help from <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2010\/12\/07\/update-on-the-landslide-in-colombia\/\">a comment from Chris K earlier in the week<\/a>, who correctly identified the area of the slide, I think the location is shown in the Google Earth perspective view below:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2010\/12\/10_12-Bello-landslide-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-2416\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2010\/12\/10_12-Bello-landslide-1-1024x695.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"339\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2010\/12\/10_12-Bello-landslide-1-1024x695.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2010\/12\/10_12-Bello-landslide-1-300x203.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2010\/12\/10_12-Bello-landslide-1.jpg 1044w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It is interesting to compare the archive imagery with this image, which was collected in 2008.\u00a0 In particular, this image from 2005 suggests that the area went through a huge amount of change, and in particular an increase in habitation, over the intervening three year period.\u00a0 The assumption must be that this continued in the two years after the most recent image:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2010\/12\/10_12-Bello-landslide-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-2417\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2010\/12\/10_12-Bello-landslide-2-1024x695.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"339\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2010\/12\/10_12-Bello-landslide-2-1024x695.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2010\/12\/10_12-Bello-landslide-2-300x203.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2010\/12\/10_12-Bello-landslide-2.jpg 1044w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It is interesting to note that the following screenshot from the video suggests that the crwon (top) of the landslide extended as far as the highway clearly visible in the Google Earth image above:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2010\/12\/10_12-Bello-landslide-3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2418\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2010\/12\/10_12-Bello-landslide-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"485\" height=\"306\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2010\/12\/10_12-Bello-landslide-3.jpg 485w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2010\/12\/10_12-Bello-landslide-3-300x189.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 485px) 100vw, 485px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>So let&#8217;s take a look at the Google Earth imagery of this area as well as looking at the image from the video:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2010\/12\/10_12-Bello-landslide-4.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-2419\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2010\/12\/10_12-Bello-landslide-4-1024x695.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"339\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2010\/12\/10_12-Bello-landslide-4-1024x695.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2010\/12\/10_12-Bello-landslide-4-300x203.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2010\/12\/10_12-Bello-landslide-4.jpg 1044w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Hmmm &#8211; I wonder if this is a fill slope upon which the road bench has been constructed?\u00a0 It looks suspiciously like that to me, though I can&#8217;t say for certain.\u00a0 It is interesting that this slope seems to have lost vegetation through time as well.\u00a0 So I wonder if the landslide was triggered by failure of an artificial slope below the road, which then loaded and entrained the material downslope to generate this large failure?\u00a0 That is certainly a good starting hypothesis I think, although a great deal of work is needed to determine what actually happened.<\/p>\n<p>Comments or alternative models?<\/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>This article provides a brief assessment of the Bello landslide in Colombia, which is now thought to have killed about 120 people.  It prfesents a hypothesis about the possible cause of the landslide.<!-- 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":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[507,359,469,959,27],"class_list":["post-2415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bello","tag-colombia","tag-featured","tag-landslide-report","tag-road"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2415","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=2415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}