{"id":42997,"date":"2023-02-27T07:42:33","date_gmt":"2023-02-27T07:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=42997"},"modified":"2023-02-27T07:44:13","modified_gmt":"2023-02-27T07:44:13","slug":"kandersteg-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2023\/02\/27\/kandersteg-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Kandersteg: a massive rock slope failure in Switzerland caught on video"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4><strong>Kandersteg: a massive rock slope failure in Switzerland caught on video<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>On 23 February 2023 a large <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?s=%22rock+slope%22&amp;submit.x=0&amp;submit.y=0&amp;mswhere=blog\">rock slope failure<\/a> occurred in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.blick.ch\/schweiz\/bern\/bei-allmenalp-schwerer-felssturz-in-kandersteg-be-id18344494.html?utm_medium=social&amp;amp;utm_campaign=share-button&amp;amp;utm_source=copy-to-clipboard\">Kandersteg in the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland<\/a>.\u00a0 The failure, which had a volume in the range of 15,000 to 20,000 cubic metres, was from the Allmenalp.\u00a0 The rock slope collapse had been anticipated, so that no loss of life occurred, and there was no damage to buildings.<\/p>\n<p>The event was captured on several videos, of which <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_-jU30W6vkg\">this is probably the best<\/a>:-<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Hier kommt in Kandersteg der Berg runter. #Bergsturz\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_-jU30W6vkg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.srf.ch\/news\/schweiz\/an-felswand-der-allmenalp-keine-verletzten-nach-felssturz-in-kandersteg-1\">SRF News has a good article about the event<\/a>, in German, which notes that the block was being monitored using radar, allowing a warning to be issued. The article includes a short archive film about the use of monitoring in the area.<\/p>\n<p>The location of the rockfall is about [46.491, 7.658].\u00a0 This image shows the aftermath of the rockfall:-<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_43000\" style=\"width: 807px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-43000\" class=\"wp-image-43000\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2023\/02\/23_02-Kandersteg-1.jpg\" alt=\"The site of the 23 February 2023 rockfall at Kandersteg in Switzerland. \" width=\"797\" height=\"406\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2023\/02\/23_02-Kandersteg-1.jpg 805w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2023\/02\/23_02-Kandersteg-1-300x153.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2023\/02\/23_02-Kandersteg-1-768x391.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 797px) 100vw, 797px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-43000\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>The site of the 23 February 2023 rockfall at Kandersteg in Switzerland. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rts.ch\/info\/regions\/berne\/13810788-un-eboulement-de-pierres-se-produit-pres-de-kandersteg-sans-faire-de-blesse.html\">Image via RTS<\/a>.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>This is an area of frequent rock slope failures.\u00a0 Previous events have occurred from Allmenalp in 2008 and in 2018, for example.\u00a0 On the other side of the valley is the Spitzer Stein area above Lake Oeschinen, in which active rock slope deformation is occurring.\u00a0 This is a much larger volume &#8211; about 20 million cubic metres.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.geotest.ch\/en\/projects\/projects-detail\/hazard-management-spitzer-stein\">Geotest has a nice article about its work monitoring the site<\/a>, whilst <a href=\"https:\/\/www.swissinfo.ch\/eng\/multimedia\/the-spitzer-stein-above-kandersteg\/47010074\">Swissinfo has a short video showing the scale of the hazard at this location<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<h4>Acknowledgement<\/h4>\n<p>Thanks to Doris Hermle of TUM, who made me aware of this event.<\/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>Kandersteg: a massive rock slope failure in Switzerland caught on video. Fortunately, the collapse had been anticipated through monitoring<!-- 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":43000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[447,144,469,959,963,39,56,444],"class_list":["post-42997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-video","tag-alps","tag-europe","tag-featured","tag-landslide-report","tag-landslide-video","tag-monitoring","tag-rockfall","tag-switzerland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42997","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=42997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}