{"id":40774,"date":"2022-05-04T06:23:24","date_gmt":"2022-05-04T06:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=40774"},"modified":"2022-05-04T06:23:24","modified_gmt":"2022-05-04T06:23:24","slug":"claxton-bay-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2022\/05\/04\/claxton-bay-1\/","title":{"rendered":"The Claxton Bay landslide in Trinidad"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Claxton Bay landslide in Trinidad<\/h4>\n

The residents of a community in Belle View in the Claxton Bay area of Trinidad in the Caribbean<\/a> are having their lives destroyed by a landslide.\u00a0 The failure started to damage the houses in September 2021; to date six houses have been affected.\u00a0 Last week the residents received a letter from the owners of a quarry downslope from the site<\/a>, informing them that their houses are likely to suffer further damage in the rainy season.<\/p>\n

This image, from the Trinidad Guardian<\/a>, shows the scale of the problem:-<\/p>\n

\"Landslide

Landslide damage from the landslide at Claxton Bay in Trinidad. Image by Ivan Toolsie via the Trinidad Guardian<\/a>.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

I believe that the location of the landslide is 10.381\u00b0, -61.445\u00b0. This is a Google Earth image of the site, dated May 2021:-<\/p>\n

\"Google

Google Earth image of the site of the Claxton Bay landslide in Trinidad, collected in May 2021, before the landslide retrogressed to affect the houses.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/em><\/p>\n

The key features here are the quarry on the downslope side, the clear active landslide beneath the marker, and the houses at the top of the slope (top of the image).\u00a0 This image was collected before the landslide retrogressed to affect the houses.<\/p>\n

The historical image set for this site is really interesting and very informative.\u00a0 An image from February 2015 shows active quarrying at the site, and the creation of a steep slope on the quarry face:-<\/p>\n

\"Google

Google Earth image of the site of the Claxton Bay landslide in Trinidad, collected in February 2015, before the landslide retrogressed to affect the houses.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

By January 2016 the situation had changed considerably.\u00a0 The intensity of quarry activity appears to have been lower, but a landslide had started to develop in the wall of the quarry, immediately to the right of the marker in the image.\u00a0 Two clear lobes had developed, one of which had impinged significantly into the workings.\u00a0 Land was being lost from below the houses:-<\/p>\n

\"Google

Google Earth image of the site of the Claxton Bay landslide in Trinidad, collected in January 2017, before the landslide retrogressed to affect the houses.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

By November 2018 the landslide had developed very significantly.\u00a0 The head scarp of the main failure had retrogressed by about 100 metres, the landslide had widened and the lobes had extended much further into the quarry:-<\/p>\n

\"Google

Google Earth image of the site of the Claxton Bay landslide in Trinidad, collected in November 2018, before the landslide retrogressed to affect the houses.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

It also appears that the remaining unfailed portion of the slope was degrading rapidly.<\/p>\n

The image in May 2021, although partially affected by cloud, shows that a much larger failure had developed.\u00a0 This is zoomed in view from that time:-<\/p>\n

\"Zoomed

Zoomed in Google Earth image of the site of the Claxton Bay landslide in Trinidad, collected in May 2021.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

It is not difficult to see how a further episode of retrogression has directly impacted the houses.<\/p>\n

It is interesting to note that the letter from the owner of the quarry is explicit that it does not accept liability for the landslide.\u00a0 Readers will be able to come to their own conclusions as to whether this is a reasonable position.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The residents of a community in the Claxton Bay area of Trinidad in the Caribbean are having their lives destroyed by a landslide <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":40777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,27393],"tags":[173,469,959,299,205,268,30687],"class_list":["post-40774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","category-mining","tag-caribbean","tag-featured","tag-landslide-report","tag-mine","tag-mining","tag-quarrying","tag-trinidad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40774","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=40774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}