{"id":28655,"date":"2018-09-18T06:01:12","date_gmt":"2018-09-18T06:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=28655"},"modified":"2018-09-18T06:01:12","modified_gmt":"2018-09-18T06:01:12","slug":"barangay-ucab-landslide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2018\/09\/18\/barangay-ucab-landslide\/","title":{"rendered":"Drone images of the Barangay Ucab landslide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Drone images of the Barangay Ucab landslide<\/h4>\n

The loss of life from the Barangay Ucab landslide<\/a> has now reached 54 people; the search for victims continues<\/a>.\u00a0 There is now agreement that there is no possibility of further survivors.\u00a0 Sadly, it is thought that 42 people remain missing, potentially making this one of the most deadly landslides of the year to date.<\/p>\n

On Twitter, Mohammed Abdiker<\/a> (Director of Operations and Emergencies at the International Organization for Migration<\/a> – the UN migration agency) has posted a set of images collected by drone of the Barangay Ucab landslide.\u00a0 These reveal for the first time the nature of the landslide:-<\/p>\n

\"Barangay

The Barangay Ucab landslide in the Philippines. Drone image posted to Twitter by Mohammed Abdiker<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

This image shows that the landslide was a large, comparatively deep-seated slide in deeply weathered regolith.\u00a0 It appears to me that the slide transitioned into a channelised flow once it reached the channel; it is this flow that appears to have destroyed the accommodation block. This image shows the channel downstream of the landslide source, including some of the destroyed structures:-<\/p>\n

\"Barangay

The lower reaches of the Barangay Ucab landslide in the Philippines. Drone image posted to Twitter by Mohammed Abdiker.<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Notably, most of the debris appears to have left the channel and entered the main river.\u00a0 This may explain why so many victims have not been recovered as yet.\u00a0 The image below shows the channel in more detail.\u00a0 Note the people for scale – this provides a sense of the magnitude of this landslide.\u00a0 The vulnerability of the buildings is also clear, as is the presence of many other landslides in addition to the one that caused such high loss of life:-<\/p>\n

\"Barangay

The scale of destruction at the Barangay Ucab landslide in the Philippines. Drone image posted to Twitter by Mohammed Abdiker.<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

In terms of the cause of the landslide, I suspect that the investigation might like to look carefully at the road that crosses the slide.\u00a0 This part of the first image provides more detail:-<\/p>\n

\"Barangay

Further detail of the Barangay Ucab landslide in the Philippines. Drone image posted to Twitter by Mohammed Abdiker.<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The intact section of road suggests deep undercutting of the hillslope, with no apparent slope protection.\u00a0 We have previously seen a failure mechanism in which such road cuts destabilise the upper portion of the slope<\/a> (NB PDF), which loads the lower portion, triggering large-scale failure that transitions into a flow. To verify this requires further investigation, and there may be other explanations, but it would be a good initial working hypothesis.<\/p>\n

Such unplanned road cutting is rampant in mountain areas around the world; it inflicts a huge cost on these communities<\/a>, and on the environment<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Drone footage has been released by the UN Migration Agency providing detail of the deadly Barangay Ucab landslide in the Philippines<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":28663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2349,469,959,252,27,314],"class_list":["post-28655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-drone","tag-featured","tag-landslide-report","tag-philippines","tag-road","tag-se-asia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28655","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=28655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}