Road failure video from Thailand

Thanks to my former student Kurtis Garbutt for the heads up on this one.  The video below shows the progressive development of a road in Thailand.  I suspect that this initiated as a culvert failure, with multiple collapses due to undercutting:



The final frames of the video show an overview of the site.  Check out where the people are standing!

As an aside, Kurtis also runs a very interesting blog on natural hazards - take a look.  It is a very useful resource with a scope that goes way beyond my site.

First video of the Gansu landslides

The Chinese State TV company has a new report (in Mandarin) that provides aerial footage of the Gansu landslide site. It is clear from the video that there are in fact two slides. The video is available via the link below (I have removed the embedded video as it played automatically):

Video available here.

The larger of the two slides is shown in this screen capture from the video:

Strangely though neither of these two slides appear to be blocking the valley, as this screen captured image shows:

Does this mean that there is another landslide downstream that is blocking the valley?

New rockfall video from India

A good new rockfall video has been posted on Youtube, collected in the Pangi Valley of Himachal Pradesh in India:

A new landslide video

Regular readers will be aware that I like to highlight new landslide videos as and when they appear, not least because fellow educators and academics find them to be useful teaching tools.  In addition, watching the videos reminds us of what we are attempting to manage, and can also provide insight into processes.  Latest in the list is this one, which appeared on the web last week:



It appears to be a dry earthflow, but the location, trigger (the weather appears to be dry), etc are all unclear. Judging by the accents, South Asia looks to be the general area. The chap in the forground with the orange coat and a radio looks like he may have come from a construction site, so road construction may well be a factor.

Listen carefully to the comments picked up by the microphone.  "Dear me, no traffic again!" is an understatement in the true British style.

New landslide video from Brazil

Live Leak has an impressive video of a large debris flow striking and destroying a house, reportedly in Blumenau, Santa Catarina, Brazil :

New rockslide video: Highway 96 at Klamath River near the Siskiyou-Humboldt county line

Thanks to Kyle House of the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology for bringing this one to my attention.

A great new video was posted yesterday showing a rockslide onto Highway 96 at Klamath River near the Siskiyou-Humboldt county line in California. The video should be embedded below:

Rock slide on Hwy 96 in Northern California near the Humboldt/Siskiyou County line. from Paul Hailey on Vimeo.

Well worth a look! More details of the slide here:

http://www.redding.com/news/2010/mar/03/staggering-rock-slide-closes-highway-96-near-humbo/

Watch this! Extraordinary landslide video - Maierato, Italy

See update post here

The BBC has an extraordinary video of a landslide in Maierato in Southern Italy. More later, but for now the link is here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8517378.stm

UPDATE: Youtube has a longer version of the video below:



See update post here

New, remarkable animation video of the Po Shan Road landslide in Hong Kong

Thanks to David Kwok of the Geotechnical Engineering Office in Hong Kong for highlighting this video to me, and for the image below.

On 18th June 1972 Hong Kong suffered an extraordinary landslide at Po Shan Road, in the Mid-Levels area:


The slide, which had a volume of about 40,000 cubic metres, induced the collapse of two large buildings, killing 67 people and injuring a further 20. The landslide understandably caused considerably soul-searching within Hong Kong, not least because major stability problems at the site had been identified nine months before the failure. A recommendation of the Royal Commission (Hong Kong was a British dependency at that time of course) was that a government agency should be established to manage slopes. This led to the formation of what is now called the Geotechnical Engineering Office (GEO), which has worked tirelessly and with considerable success to reduce landslide losses in Hong Kong.

In 2007 as part of its 30th anniversary celebrations, GEO produced this brochure. Much more information about their work, and about slope issues in Hong Kong, can be found on their slope safety website. There is little doubt that the approach has been successful (and should be repeated elsewhere - for example in Taiwan). This graph, taken from the brochure above, shows the trends in landslide losses before and after the establishment of GEO:


However, through all of their work they have not forgotten the importance of the Po Shan Road incident. Recently, they have produced a short video describing the event. Most interesting is a set of animations of the occurrence of the landslide, including its impact on the buildings. This is an impressive and useful illustration of the destructive power of even comparatively small landslides when they occur in urbanised areas, and of the need to maintain vigilance.

The video is available from the GEO download site at the following address:

http://hkss.cedd.gov.hk/hkss/eng/download/poshan_incident_english.wmv

I have embedded the video here - you should be able to play it by clicking on the video screen below:



Do take a look - it is well worth it - and download the original from the GEO download site.

Landslide impacts in Turkey

The last few days have seen very heavy rain in Turkey, with a number of landslides. ITN has a short clip of home footage showing a large buikding collapsing as it is hit by a landslide:

http://itn.co.uk/9cff433ac9de157976f9b579cbe8c656.html

The distress shown by the man in the foreground - presumably an owner or resident - illustrates graphically the impact of these events on people.

One of the best landslide videos so far!

Many of the landslide videos that I have featured on here have been quite low quality. The one featured below is unusually good. I have updated this to provide the (better) Youtube version:



The slide apparently occurred at Polk County in Tennessee, USA, on 10th November 2009. The slide appears to be a rockslide on a discontinuity dipping parallel to the slope. An interesting element of this is the clear signs of precursory activity - note the blocks on the road and the small slide that happens just before the main slide.

New landslide video - houses destroyed in Brazil, November 2008

I have come across an impressive and dramatic landslide video, apparently from Brazil and taken in November 2008. The video quality is reasonably good:



Or you can go directly to the Liveleak web page.

Video of the aftermath of landslides triggered by Typhoon Parma in the Philippines

Latest update here.

Youtube has an interesting video of the aftermath of the Philippine landslides triggered by Typhoon Parma (known locally as Pepeng):



If the above does not work you can access it via the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuF1KFXBqAs&feature=related

Interesting landslide footage from La Jolla, California

Image from here

The La Jolla landslide in San Diego California occurred in October 2007, destroying three houses and a road, and leaving many more damaged. The landslide is currently the subject of a lawsuit that was filed by the householders. I am not going to comment further on the slide whilst this is going on, but as part of the evidence in the case some mobile phone footage has emerged of the slide as it occurred. This footage is unusual in that it covers a progressive, non-catastrophic slide, essentially showing the tension cracks opening as the slide occurred. The footage can be viewed here. The complete (8 minute) footage, available on that page, is worth viewing.

A video of a river bank failure

The BBC News website has a short video showing the effects of heavy rainfall in Southern China in mid August. Most notable is a pretty remarkable piece of footage of buildings sliding down a river bank and into the torrents below. You can view it here.

New landslide videos - slow moving slides affecting houses

I have come across yet another new landslide video. This one was shot in Brazil during the recent heavy rainfall there. This one is quite unusual as the landslide is large and slow moving, but in the video it overruns a house, causing it to collapse:

You should be able to play the movie below:



There is also a short video of a landslide removing the support from a deck at the back of a house, which then collapses, here:

Three new landslide / debris flow videos

Thanks to Lynn Highland at the USGS for drawing my attention to this video of a debris flow in Costa Rica:



This is a slightly strange event. It occurred on the Sarapiqui River in Costa Rica after the 16th January 2009 Cinchona earthquake. It is not all clear why the earthquake should have triggered such a debris flow given that there was no rainfall, but a suggestion is that there may have been mobilisation of shallow groundwater. Another possibility is the creation and then collapse of a barrier lake.

The same event also appears to have been captured in this video:



If anyone has any more information then I would be very interested in hearing about this event.

In Hong Kong last month I saw a video taken of a collapsing hillside during the Wenchuan earthquake. This appears to have been shot in the Wolong Panda Reserve area. The quality is poor, but the footage of the collapsing slope is dramatic:

USGS educational video on landslides in the San Francisco Bay Area

Thanks to the Geology blog In Terra Veritas for highlighting a USGS video on landslides in the San Francisco Bay area. The video is a useful teaching / background resource, especially in terms of the way that it highlights the impacts of landslides on home owners, which is easily forgotten by both students and their teachers. The video compares two different slides; first, the Love Creek Heights landslide in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which was a large (600 m long x 250 m wide; 500,000 cubic metres) slide triggered by a heavy rainstorm on 5th January 1982. It killed 10 people.

The second is the La Honda landslide, which is a slow moving failure, also in the Santa Cruz mountains. This slide was the subject of one of my very first posts in December 2007.

Overall, this video is a useful resource that helps to understand landslides themselves and also their impact.

A new landslide video from Bolivia

I have come across another video of a landslide from Bolivia. I suspect that this is the recent slide in La Paz, as per the following report from The News:

"At least 300 people have been injured in the Bolivian city of La Paz following a serious mudslide, Mayor Juan del Granado said Tuesday. "The (movements) are still ongoing but we are talking about more than 60 families affected and 300 people injured," del Granado said. Until now we are talking about more or less 50 houses that are affected," he added. The landslide affected an area of four hectares and was caused by "the presence of subterranean water, which lubricated a level of earth" according to Johnny Bernal, a municipal expert. No fatalities have been reported"

The video is a news report Carried on Live Leak. It is available here, or you should be able to view it below:



Some pretty dramatic imagery of the impact of landslides in urban areas.

Another landslide video - car hit by landslide in Japan

There has been an extraordinary flurry of landslide videos of late (e.g. here) presumably reflecting both the high occurrence of landslide events and the ubiquity video sharing sites. Another has appeared this morning - this time from Japan. The video should be embedded below or can be viewed here.

Watch more LiveLeak videos on AOL Video

I guess this is not as spectacular as for example this one, this one and this one, but is interesting nonetheless. The occupants of the car were lucky that the slide did not engulf the car or push it off the road. One interesting aspect is the way that the car was bulldozed rather than being buried, which is a useful observation when we think about the rescue of survivors.

Does anyone know where in Japan this happened? The date on the video appears to be 31st January.

Some interesting landslide sites

I thought that it was high time to post a summary of some interesting landslide sites:

Aowanda landslide
There is an interesting youtube video of a smallish progressive rockslide occurring at Aowanda in Taiwan here. It should also be visible below:



Not quite as dramatic as some others, but useful nonetheless.

Five disastrous landslides that changed the Canadian Landscape
There is quite a nice non-scientific piece here that describes in non-technical language five large and significant historic landslides in Canada over the last century or so. Good images!

Rockfall blog
There is an interesting new blog here that looks at measures that can be used to prevent rockfalls. Although it is in Italian, Google Language Tools do a pretty good job of translating the text. I guess one should be a little careful of the fact that it is promoting a company, but there is some nice stuff there.

The largest known landslide?
National Geographic has a nice story here that speculates that a large deposit on Mars might be the debris from a landslide that would have been the size of the United States. Working on Mars must be great because no-one can check your interpretation with field data.

Flashflood footage
It is a fine line between a debris-rich flash flood and a debris flow, so I thought that I would highlight this youtube video of a flash flood in Australia. The first minute isn't terribly exciting, but stick with it! It should be visible below:



Extraordinary video of the Baldwin Hills dam disaster
There is an excellent video of the collapse of the Baldwin Hills dam in 1963 on youtube here. This is a great illustration of the dangers associated with the formation and collapse of landslide dams. Again, it should be visible below: