{"id":588,"date":"2008-08-31T08:52:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-31T08:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2008\/08\/31\/updated-4th-sept-magnitude-5-7-earthquake-in-china\/"},"modified":"2010-10-21T13:43:15","modified_gmt":"2010-10-21T17:43:15","slug":"updated-4th-sept-magnitude-5-7-earthquake-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2008\/08\/31\/updated-4th-sept-magnitude-5-7-earthquake-in-china\/","title":{"rendered":"UPDATED 4th Sept: Magnitude 5.7 earthquake in China"},"content":{"rendered":"

The USGS is reporting today<\/a> that there was a Mw=5.7 (Xinhua<\/a> is reporting M=6.1) earthquake in China at 4:30 pm local time yesterday. News reports<\/a> this morning suggest that 25 people have been killed and a further 100 injured. I wouldn’t normally post on an earthquake of this size as the likelihood of triggering extensive landslides is limited. However, in this case there may be an interesting landslide angle to this.<\/p>\n

The terrain in which the earthquake struck is pretty mountainous as the following Google Earth image perspective shows. The location is the estimated epicentre, as derived by the USGS:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This is clearly the type of terrain in which landslides occur, and of course this region received a good shake in the Wenchuan event. However, of particular concern this time is the weather at the time of the earthquake. NASA TRMM<\/a> data are very useful for looking at the locations of heavy rainfall. Their latest image<\/a> shows that SW China has been having some pretty intense precipitation of late:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Given that material may have been loosened by the Wenchuan earthquake, the shallow depth of the earthquake and the rainfall at the time, there must be a reasonable chance that some landslides have occurred. It will be interesting to see if reports of landslides emerge.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: <\/span>The official news agencies<\/a> are now reporting that there were 40 fatalities, but is not specifying how these occurred. However, Xinhua<\/a> has released the following incredibly sad and poignant image showing soldiers recovering two bodies. There seems to be little doubt that these people were buried in a landslide.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
UPDATE 4th SEPTEMBER<\/span>: It does appear that landslides have proven to be a substantial problem. CCTV<\/a> is now reporting that:
“Local residents say there are areas in the remote mountainous regions that suffered even more severe devastation than Huili. But quake-triggered landslides have damaged roads leading to those areas, hampering relief efforts. And it takes several hours at the very least…for relief supplies to get through.”<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The USGS is reporting today that there was a Mw=5.7 (Xinhua is reporting M=6.1) earthquake in China at 4:30 pm local time yesterday. News reports this morning suggest that 25 people have been killed and a further 100 injured. I wouldn’t normally post on an earthquake of this size as the likelihood of triggering extensive landslides is limited. However, in this case there may be an interesting landslide angle to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[333,16,23,132],"class_list":["post-588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-333","tag-china","tag-earthquake","tag-sichuan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588","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=588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}