{"id":26368,"date":"2017-12-19T07:43:51","date_gmt":"2017-12-19T07:43:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=26368"},"modified":"2017-12-19T07:43:51","modified_gmt":"2017-12-19T07:43:51","slug":"villa-santa-lucia-landslide-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2017\/12\/19\/villa-santa-lucia-landslide-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The massive, catastrophic Villa Santa Lucia landslide in Chile: videos and images start to hint at the cause"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4>The Villa Santa Lucia landslide: videos and images start to hint at the cause<\/h4>\n<p>Over the course of yesterday it slowly started to become clear that the <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2017\/12\/18\/villa-santa-lucia-1\/\">Villa Santa Lucia landslide in Chile on Saturday<\/a> was an extremely large failure event. The most important image that I have seen to date is this Reuters image of the source zone of the landslide:-<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_26371\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-26371\" class=\"size-full wp-image-26371\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2017\/12\/17_12-VSM-8-e1513667699924.jpg\" alt=\"Villa Santa Lucia landslide\" width=\"640\" height=\"424\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-26371\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Reuters image of the source of the Villa Santa Lucia landslide, via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.t13.cl\/noticia\/nacional\/a-11-suben-fallecidos-aluvion-villa-santa-lucia\">t13cl<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>It is worth taking a closer look.\u00a0 In the image below I have merged the source area from the above image with the pre-failure Google Earth perspective view of the area.\u00a0 It is a bit clunky, but seems to indicate that this might be a massive failure of a moraine deposit at the glacier snout:-<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_26372\" style=\"width: 584px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-26372\" class=\"size-full wp-image-26372\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2017\/12\/17_12-VSM-7a.jpg\" alt=\"Villa Santa Lucia landslide\" width=\"574\" height=\"644\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2017\/12\/17_12-VSM-7a.jpg 574w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2017\/12\/17_12-VSM-7a-267x300.jpg 267w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 574px) 100vw, 574px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-26372\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Merged Reuters and Google Earth imagery of the source of the Villa Santa Lucia landslide<\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>The material involved in the flow appears to be consistent with the landslide being a combination of moraine and material that it has eroded from the hillsides and the channel.\u00a0 This makes the landslide track about 8 km from the source to Villa Santa Maria:-<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_26375\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-26375\" class=\"size-full wp-image-26375\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2017\/12\/17_12-VSM-10-e1513668325824.jpg\" alt=\"Villa Santa Lucia landslide\" width=\"640\" height=\"485\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-26375\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Approximate locations of the source, track and deposit of the Villa Santa Lucia landslide.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>The best understanding of the track of the landslide comes from this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TKj448ZTr_8\">Youtube video<\/a>, which captures a helicopter flight up the valley from Villa Santa Lucia:-<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TKj448ZTr_8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" gesture=\"media\" allow=\"encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>The erosion of the channel suggests a very large volume flow, and the super-elevation around the bends suggest high velocities.\u00a0 I have found <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wy631NQjBrw\">one video that captures the impact of the landslide on Villa Santa Lucia<\/a>:<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wy631NQjBrw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" gesture=\"media\" allow=\"encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.chileseguro.cl\/2017\/12\/19\/defensa-despliega-a-ff-aa-para-ir-en-ayuda-de-la-zona-afectada\/\">The latest news regarding the town of Villa Santa Lucia<\/a> is that 12 people have been confirmed to have been killed, and a further 14 remain missing.\u00a0 The operation to recover the victims continues.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/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>It is now becoming clear that the Villa Santa Lucia landslide was caused by a massive failure of moraine 8 km upstream of the town<!-- 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":26372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1046,469,619,959,10841,122],"class_list":["post-26368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-chile","tag-featured","tag-glacier","tag-landslide-report","tag-moraine","tag-south-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26368","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=26368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}