{"id":33170,"date":"2020-02-27T06:47:22","date_gmt":"2020-02-27T06:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=33170"},"modified":"2020-02-28T08:39:57","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T08:39:57","slug":"salkantay-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2020\/02\/27\/salkantay-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking News: a catastrophic glacier collapse and mudflow in Salkantay, Peru"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4>Breaking News: a catastrophic glacier collapse and mudflow in Salkantay, Peru<\/h4>\n<p>On 23 February 2020 (corrected &#8211; this was erroneously reported as 24 February 2020) an enormous, catastrophic debris flow tore down the Salkantay River in Santa Teresa, Peru.\u00a0 This event has killed at least four people, with a further 13 reported to be missing.\u00a0 Given the magnitude of the flow, this number is probably uncertain.<\/p>\n<p>The mudflow was captured in an<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=mgWENCSw4iI\"> extraordinary video posted to Youtube<\/a>:-<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Mudslide, Peru - 25 F\u00e9vrier 2020\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mgWENCSw4iI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>A mudflow on this scale usually requires an extraordinary cause.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/diariocorreo.pe\/edicion\/cusco\/cusco-confirman-que-desprendimiento-de-glaciar-ocasiono-tragedia-en-santa-teresa-fotos-933374\/\">Diario Correo in Peru has an explanation<\/a> &#8211; this event was caused by glacial collapse on Salkantay mountain.\u00a0 This hypothesis is proposed by O<span class=\"tlid-translation translation\" lang=\"en\">scar Vilca G\u00f3mez, who the article describes as a specialist in Hydrology and Glaciology.\u00a0 He visited the site site of the detachment as part of a research team from the National Institute for Glacier Research of the Ministry of Environment.\u00a0 They propose that an ice \/ rock avalanche detached from the mountain, crossed the Salkantay Cocha lake, and generated the huge debris flow.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The article includes the following image of the site:-<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_33175\" style=\"width: 620px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-33175\" class=\"size-full wp-image-33175\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2020\/02\/20_02-Peru-1.jpg\" alt=\"The rock \/ ice avalanche at Cusco in Peru\" width=\"610\" height=\"410\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2020\/02\/20_02-Peru-1.jpg 610w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2020\/02\/20_02-Peru-1-300x202.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 610px) 100vw, 610px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-33175\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The site of the rock \/ ice avalanche at Salkantay in Peru. Image by Benito Moncado via <a href=\"https:\/\/diariocorreo.pe\/edicion\/cusco\/cusco-confirman-que-desprendimiento-de-glaciar-ocasiono-tragedia-en-santa-teresa-fotos-933374\/\">Diario Correo Peru<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>In first inspection this appears to be a wedge failure in the rock mass that has fragmented to generate the rock \/ ice avalanche.\u00a0 The photographer appears to be standing on the landslide deposit.<\/p>\n<p>Salkantay (which also appears to be named Salcantay at times) is located at -13.340, -72.540.\u00a0 <span class=\"tlid-translation translation\" lang=\"en\"> Salkantay Cocha lake<\/span> appears to be at -13.342, -72.569.\u00a0 At the moment it is not clear as to which slope has failed to generate this ice-rock avalanche and debris flow.\u00a0 There is excellent Google Earth imagery of this area, so it should be possible to get a better understanding in due course.<\/p>\n<p>At the moment details of this very significant event are somewhat unclear; I hope that more details will emerge.\u00a0 This event is reminiscent of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/2012_Gayari_Sector_avalanche\">2012 Gayari ice and rock avalanche in Pakistan<\/a> and the <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2018\/01\/14\/villa-santa-lucia-landslide-satellite\/\">2017 Villa Santa Lucia landslide in Chile<\/a>.<\/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>Breaking News: a catastrophic glacier collapse and mudflow has killed at least 4 people, and left 13 missing, in Salkantay, Peru <!-- 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":33175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[505,57,469,28865,158,28866,122],"class_list":["post-33170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-avalanche","tag-debris-flow","tag-featured","tag-landslide-report-ice","tag-peru","tag-rock","tag-south-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33170","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=33170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}