{"id":36295,"date":"2021-01-18T09:01:47","date_gmt":"2021-01-18T09:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=36295"},"modified":"2021-01-18T09:04:00","modified_gmt":"2021-01-18T09:04:00","slug":"gravity-always-wins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2021\/01\/18\/gravity-always-wins\/","title":{"rendered":"Gravity always wins: in New Zealand landslides are more deadly than earthquakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gravity always wins: in New Zealand landslides are more deadly than earthquakes<\/h4>\n

New Zealand<\/a> is a country with an abundance of natural hazards – earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, tsunami, cyclonic storms and landslides, amongst others.\u00a0 Of the geophysical hazards, it is earthquakes and volcanoes that attract most of the attention, driven by large events such as the Christchurch earthquake sequence<\/a>, the Kaikoura earthquake<\/a> and the Whakaari \/White Island eruption<\/a>.\u00a0 Landslides are generally not considered to be such a major issue around the world, and are often dismissed as a secondary hazard.<\/p>\n

Interestingly though, my colleagues at GNS Science<\/a> have been looking the comparative impact of landslides and earthquakes through time in New Zealand.\u00a0 The online news service Stuff has a good article about this work today<\/a>.\u00a0 The simple conclusion is startling:<\/p>\n

Landslides are significantly more dangerous than earthquakes, according to an analysis by GNS Science.\u200b<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Interestingly the article provides some detail to this through some words from Jo Horrocks, the chief resilience and research officer of the Earthquake Commission (EQC)<\/a>, the national insurer against earthquakes (and landslides)<\/span>.\u00a0 She noted that landslides cost the country an average of NZ$250 to 300 million (about \u00a3125-150 million) and that<\/span> over the last 160 years they have claimed about 1800 lives.\u00a0 This is considerably higher than the toll from earthquakes.<\/p>\n

\"The

Gravity always wins – the aftermath of landslides in Christchurch, New Zealand<\/p><\/div>\n

The reasons that they are under appreciated is that landslides tend to happen as frequent events from which the losses accumulate.\u00a0 Huge clusters of landslides do occur – the Kaikoura earthquake was a fine example – but of course these are usually triggered by another event, such as an earthquake or a cyclone.\u00a0 Very often it is the landslides that cause the losses.<\/p>\n

I am sure that this effect is seen in many other countries as well.\u00a0 The article in Stuff has a nice quote, taken from an article in the <\/a>Te Ara Encyclopaedia of NZ<\/em>\u200b<\/a> :<\/span><\/p>\n

Gravity always wins<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gravity always wins: new research by GNS Science has shown that in New Zealand landslides are more deadly than earthquakes <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":36298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[740],"tags":[74,469,1003,566,7],"class_list":["post-36295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-costs","tag-fatalities","tag-featured","tag-landslide-costs","tag-landslide-impacts","tag-new-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36295","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=36295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}