{"id":43427,"date":"2023-04-19T05:59:41","date_gmt":"2023-04-19T05:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=43427"},"modified":"2023-04-19T05:59:41","modified_gmt":"2023-04-19T05:59:41","slug":"torkham-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2023\/04\/19\/torkham-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Torkham – a large rockslide in Pakistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Torkham – a large rockslide in Pakistan<\/h4>\n

On 18 April 2023, a large rockslide occurred at Torkham<\/a> in Pakistan<\/a>, very close to the border with Afghanistan.\u00a0 The landslide, which occurred in the early hours of the morning, struck a line of trucks waiting to cross the border. It is thought that about 20 trucks were buried in the accident.\u00a0 At the time of writing, three people are known to have been killed and a further eight people have been injured.\u00a0 Rescue operations continue, led by the army<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The best image that I have found of this landslide has been tweeted by Pakistan Armed Forces News<\/a>:-<\/p>\n

\"The

The 18 April 2023 landslide at Torkham in Pakistan. Image tweeted by Pakistan Armed Forces News<\/a>.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The image shows a rockslide – based upon the scar it appears that the landslide has mobilised a set of discontinuities inclined parallel or sub-parallel to the slope.\u00a0 The debris appears to have bulldozed the trucks, and there is some evidence of the aftermath of a fire.\u00a0 Rescue operations will be very challenging as the boulders are large and of course removal of debris at the toe risks creating instability in the debris pile.<\/p>\n

The location of the landslide is [34.115, 71.102].\u00a0 This is a Google Earth image of the landscape, collected in October 2021:-<\/p>\n

\"Google

Google Earth view of the site of the 18 April 2023 landslide at Torkham in Pakistan.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Of interest here is the indication that the toe of the slope has been cut as part of construction works.\u00a0 By comparison, here is an image from 2016:-<\/p>\n

\"Archive

Archive (2016) Google Earth view of the site of the 18 April 2023 landslide at Torkham in Pakistan.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

I have created a slider to allow the two images to be compared:-<\/p>\n

\"Google\"Archive<\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

It is unclear as to what has happened at the site since 2021 – there may be some evidence of the creation of concrete structures for the road – but a reasonable starting hypothesis could be that the cutting of the toe has enabled the instability.<\/p>\n

News reports indicate that the landslide was triggered by a lightning strike.\u00a0 In most cases, such reports are erroneous, with the actual trigger being the very rainfall that accompanies the thunderstorm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 18 April 2023 a large rockslide occurred at Torkham in Pakistan, very close to the border with Afghanistan.\u00a0At least three people were killed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":43430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[212,469,103,959,10,27,136],"class_list":["post-43427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-construction","tag-featured","tag-highway","tag-landslide-report","tag-pakistan","tag-road","tag-rockslide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43427","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=43427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}