{"id":9496,"date":"2014-05-05T08:19:29","date_gmt":"2014-05-05T08:19:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=9496"},"modified":"2014-05-07T06:57:07","modified_gmt":"2014-05-07T06:57:07","slug":"ab-barak-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2014\/05\/05\/ab-barak-1\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ab Barak landslide in Afghanistan – a foreseeable event?"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Ab Barak landslide<\/h5>\n

At the site of the Ab Barak landslide<\/a> in Badakhshan, Afghanistan, efforts to recover victims have now ceased<\/a>, with the focus moving to the 4000 or so survivors, many of whom have been left destitute. There remains considerable uncertainty about the number of victims<\/a> – sadly this is unlikely to be resolved – with estimates ranging from “over 300” to 2,700.\u00a0 With 300 houses having been buried, and a large number of additional people having entered the area after the initial landslide event, it is likely that the number lost will be at the higher end of the range (though hopefully not as high as 2,700).<\/p>\n

Was Ab Barak foreseeable?<\/h5>\n

Determining the location of the Ab Barak landslide has been challenging, and I am grateful to Kerry Leath of TUM<\/a> for figuring it out.\u00a0 He has an excellent blog post online<\/a> about the site of the landslide, in which he has reconstructed the event in Google Earth.\u00a0 I’ll not repeat that here, but the site of the landslide on the Google Earth imagery (from 2004) is of interest:<\/p>\n

\"Ab<\/a><\/p>\n

..<\/p>\n

The above image unfortunately crosses the boundary between two Google Earth source images, and of course the area of interest is just within the lower resolution area.\u00a0 The source of the landslide is the easily-identifiable, heavily gullied area just to the right of centre on the opposite side of the valley from the village.\u00a0 That this area was potentially unstable is easily identifiable from the imagery above – it would be even clearer on a higher resolution image or an aerial photograph.\u00a0 Thus, with a basic mapping programme the hazard could easily have been identified and steps taken to manage it.\u00a0 As with the Oso landslide in Washington<\/a>, we have a foreseeable landslide inducing a disaster – in others words, for whatever reason (which may well be a failure to implement an appropriate study rather a failing on the part of the hazard managers), we have failed to identify and mitigate the hazard properly.<\/p>\n

A landslide hazard identification and mapping programme in this highly landslide-prone area of Afghanistan would be far cheaper than the cost of this single landslide.\u00a0 Given that the expertise is readily available around the world to undertake this type of exercise, it is a folly that it is not being done.\u00a0 This of course applies in many other locations as well, as today’s landslide in Nepal also demonstrates<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The trigger for the landslide was a period of very heavy rainfall.\u00a0 Reliefweb has a rather nice map<\/a>, generated with TRMM data, showing the total rainfall accumulation in the period 25-29th April:<\/p>\n

\"Ab<\/a><\/p>\n

..<\/p>\n

Kerry Leith notes that a lake is building up behind the landslide mass.\u00a0 He rightly notes that this represents a threat and needs to be managed.<\/p>\n

Finally, there is some evidence that the is not the only significant landslide in Afghanistan in the last few days.\u00a0 Bilal Sarwary<\/a> tweeted this image, from Mohammad Salem Wahdat<\/a>, of another site, apparently also in Argo District:<\/p>\n

\"Ab<\/a>

Mohammad Salem Wahdat via Bilal Sarwary<\/p><\/div>\n

..<\/p>\n

That is a truly terrifying site.\u00a0 I have no idea of the context of this image (and cannot say for certain that it is from Argo District, though the materials and buildings look to me to reasonable for this area), but if this is an ongoing slide then the level of danger is obviously very high.\u00a0 The village is in effect already lost, being located on a displaced block. but I wonder what is downslope.\u00a0 Does anyone have any more information?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As better information emerges about the Ab Barak landslide in Afghanistan on Friday, it has become clear that the event was foreseeable with a simple study<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":9497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[783,315,469,959,232],"class_list":["post-9496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-ab-barak","tag-afghanistan","tag-featured","tag-landslide-report","tag-loess"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9496","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=9496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}