{"id":6780,"date":"2013-08-10T16:09:20","date_gmt":"2013-08-10T16:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=6780"},"modified":"2013-08-11T02:28:39","modified_gmt":"2013-08-11T02:28:39","slug":"akita-landslide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2013\/08\/10\/akita-landslide\/","title":{"rendered":"A large, deadly landslide in Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The rainy season in Asia continues to wreak its normal landslide toll, with daily reports of fatality-inducing events.\u00a0 For example, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ndtv.com\/article\/india\/seven-dead-in-landslide-in-odisha-coal-mine-403886\">today there is a report of a landslide at a coal mine in Odisha<\/a>, India that has killed at least seven people, with as many as 20 people reported missing.\u00a0 The reports suggest that this was a collapse of a spoil heap.\u00a0 Parts of Japan have also been affected by exceptional rainfall in the last few days.\u00a0 Most notable has been rainfall at Akita Province in NE Japan on Friday, in which the peak intensity was reportedly 108 mm in a single hour early in the morning, triggering extensive flooding and landslides.\u00a0 The most dramatic landslide appears to have occurred at Senboku (some reports spell this as Semboku) &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-2388654\/Dramatic-mudslide-sweeps-away-hamlet-northern-Japan-inches-torrential-rain-falls-HOUR-leaving-dead.html\">the Daily Mail has a dramatic set of photographs of the landslide<\/a>, including this remarkable image:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6781\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/08\/13_08-Senboku-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6781\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6781\" alt=\"Senboku landslide, Japan\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/08\/13_08-Senboku-1.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"894\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/08\/13_08-Senboku-1.jpg 964w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/08\/13_08-Senboku-1-214x300.jpg 214w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/08\/13_08-Senboku-1-733x1024.jpg 733w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-6781\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-2388654\/Dramatic-mudslide-sweeps-away-hamlet-northern-Japan-inches-torrential-rain-falls-HOUR-leaving-dead.html<\/p><\/div>\n<p>..<\/p>\n<p>This landslide killed at least four people, with another believed to be missing.\u00a0 There are a couple of aspects of this landslide that are quite interesting.\u00a0 It appears to have originated as a medium-sized landslide with a very clear, planar head scarp.\u00a0 Downslope the landslide has clearly ploughed through and destroyed the forest, but there seems to be relatively little erosion of the soil, especially on the left side of the image.\u00a0 The main track of the landslide is down the right side on the image, I suspect.\u00a0 At the foot of the slope in this image there is considerable damage and many fallen trees, but little evidence of any debris from the landslide itself, which suggests that it moved further downslope before stopping, which implies a very mobile landslide mass.\u00a0 This is supported by an image of the rescue operations further down the landslide track, which show soldiers knee deep in very soft sediment:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6782\" style=\"width: 649px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/08\/13_08-Senboku-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6782\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6782\" alt=\"13_08 Senboku 2\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/08\/13_08-Senboku-2.jpg\" width=\"639\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/08\/13_08-Senboku-2.jpg 964w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/08\/13_08-Senboku-2-300x187.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 639px) 100vw, 639px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-6782\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-2388654\/Dramatic-mudslide-sweeps-away-hamlet-northern-Japan-inches-torrential-rain-falls-HOUR-leaving-dead.html<\/p><\/div>\n<p>..<\/p>\n<p>Up at the crown of the landslide there is a small building with what is presumably a water pipe extending downslope.\u00a0 The water pipe seems to run right across the headscarp on the right side of the image.\u00a0 I wonder what this pipe is?\u00a0 Having a water (?) pipe so close to a landslide seems to be an interesting coincidence.\u00a0 It is hard to see if it is intact, but a zoom in of the image above suggests that it would be worth close examination:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/08\/13_08-Senboku-31.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6784\" alt=\"13_08 Senboku 3\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/08\/13_08-Senboku-31.png\" width=\"565\" height=\"512\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/08\/13_08-Senboku-31.png 565w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/08\/13_08-Senboku-31-300x271.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 565px) 100vw, 565px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/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>On Friday a large landslide killed at least four people at Senboku in Akita Province in Japan<!-- 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":6781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[469,361,959],"class_list":["post-6780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-featured","tag-japan","tag-landslide-report"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6780","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=6780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}