{"id":5057,"date":"2012-07-28T16:04:11","date_gmt":"2012-07-28T16:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=5057"},"modified":"2012-07-28T16:04:12","modified_gmt":"2012-07-28T16:04:12","slug":"a-landslide-is-rapidly-destroying-a-world-heritage-site-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2012\/07\/28\/a-landslide-is-rapidly-destroying-a-world-heritage-site-in-india\/","title":{"rendered":"A landslide is rapidly destroying a World Heritage site in India"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ever impressive Save the Hills blog<\/a> in India has a post including a set of images<\/a> of a retrogressive slope failure in India that is threatening the railway shed at Tindharia.\u00a0 This is a railway settlement built by the side of the famous Toy Train – the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR)<\/a>.\u00a0 The DHR was constructed by the British back in 1881, and was designated a World Heritage Site in 1999\/2000.\u00a0 The construction of this mountain railway is an astonishing achievement, and in this terrain maintain it is a very substantial challenge.\u00a0 Unfortunately, in 2010 the track was severed by a landslide <\/a>at Pagla Jhora<\/a> (picture by David Mead):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The line is still blocked at this point.\u00a0 Then in 2011 another landslide severed the line at Tindharia<\/a> (picture from Hari Pasod Sharma):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The result is that there is now no service on the upper parts of the line, with only a very limited service in the lower portions. This Google Earth perspective image from 2008 shows the Tindharia site quite well – the large building is the railway maintenance shed, with the line looping around it.\u00a0 The landslide has occurred in the heavily eroded terrain below the line:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Unfortunately, on 19th-20th July 2012, the Tindharia landslide reactivated considerably during a heavy monsoon rainstorm<\/a>, and has now removed both a substantial section of track and started to damage the walls of the shed.\u00a0 Save the Hills<\/a> has an image of the site at the crown of the landslide:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>DHR has an overview of the landslide<\/a>, showing the degree to which it has retrogressed in the recent event (the labels are theirs not mine):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This is clearly now a crisis for the railway.\u00a0 Even without further retrogression (which does seem likely), the damage is now quite profound.\u00a0 Reopening the line will be exceptionally difficult without very large-scale engineering works.\u00a0 Further retrogression of the landslide will lead to the loss of these historic buildings.\u00a0 In turn, the landslide will be causing widespread economic costs through the region through the loss of both communication links and tourism.<\/p>\n

This does seem to be an issue that deserves more attention.\u00a0 Your thoughts on possible solutions or ideas for mitigation are welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, a World Heritage site, has been closed by a landslide at Tindharia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":5061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[207,469,5,959,80],"class_list":["post-5057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-darjeeling","tag-featured","tag-india","tag-landslide-report","tag-railway"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5057","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=5057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}