{"id":32624,"date":"2019-12-04T06:55:40","date_gmt":"2019-12-04T06:55:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=32624"},"modified":"2019-12-04T06:55:40","modified_gmt":"2019-12-04T06:55:40","slug":"les-mees-rockfall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2019\/12\/04\/les-mees-rockfall\/","title":{"rendered":"Les Mees: a spectacular and unusual rockfall in France"},"content":{"rendered":"

Les Mees: a spectacular and unusual rockfall in France<\/strong><\/h4>\n

On 2 December 2019 a spectacular rockfall<\/a> occurred above the village of Les Mees in <\/a> Alpes de Haute Provence<\/a>, France<\/a>.\u00a0 The failure, which was triggered by the exceptional rainfall that has occurred through the autumn, is reported to have developed on a steep rock bluff known as Les P\u00e9nitents (although judging by the imagery I suspect it actually occurred on an adjacent bluff rather than Les P\u00e9nitents themselves).\u00a0 The blocks, which must weigh over a thousand tonnes, destroyed a house:-<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Les

The aftermath of the 2 December 2019 rockfall at Les Mees. Image via L’Obs \/ AFP<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Note the very large block at the toe of the slope and the smaller, but still very substantial block 50 m or so further down the slope.<\/p>\n

The landslide occurred at 4:15 pm local time.\u00a0 Fortunately the occupants of the destroyed property were at work, so no fatalities occurred.\u00a0 The Twitter account @ALERTES_INFO<\/span><\/a> tweeted this image of the aftermath of the rockfall<\/a>, taken from the road.\u00a0 This is the smaller of the two blocks, with the larger one being visible in the background:-<\/p>\n

\"Les

Devastation caused by the 2 December 2019 rockfall at Les Mees in France. Image tweeted<\/a> by @ALERTES_INFO<\/span><\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Les P\u00e9nitents<\/span> are a set of geological columns that sit above the ancient village of Les Mees, named for their resemblance to a group of monks wearing pointed hoods.\u00a0 The rocks are eroded columns formed from the Valensole Formation<\/span>, a Miocene and Pliocene<\/span> conglomerate formed from subalpine debris.\u00a0 The images suggest that the rock mass has few discontinuities such as joints, which both allow it to form these large pillars and enable the detachment of large, coherent blocks when failures occur.\u00a0 In this case, large rockfalls are likely to be comparatively infrequent but to have very high potential cost.<\/p>\n

This rockfall is likely to present an interesting hazard management challenge for the village.\u00a0 Determining the likelihood of a failure of this type will not be straightforward, but as the images above show the consequences could be substantial.\u00a0 Clearly catching or retaining such a boulder is difficult, and modifying the rock mass is likely to be unacceptable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 2 December 2019 a spectacular rockfall occurred above the village of Les Mees in Alpes de Haute Provence, France, completely destroying a house <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":32627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[144,469,274,56],"class_list":["post-32624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-europe","tag-featured","tag-france","tag-rockfall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32624","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=32624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}