Coastal erosion as art

The Guardian has a slightly bizarre article today. It is entitled "The art of watching your house fall into the sea". It tells the story of artist Kane Cunningham, who has bought a bungalow on the cliff edge at Knipe Point near to Scarborough. This site has been featured here before as recent landsliding has threatened to destroy a number of houses. He says in the article:

"I'm going to turn the moment my studio collapses into an art work: I've set up cameras to film it, and I've commissioned music and poetry to celebrate it. Both our houses punch a hole in what we think of as the value of ­property, and remind us of our moral and ethical responsibility to nature... When my studio disappears, I'll have no sense of loss – that will be its beautiful final act. The sooner it goes, for me, the better."

He has a website about this here. Quite bizarre, but it could be very interesting to watch.

Overview photo of the Bandung landslide

The Jakarta Post has an overview image of the Bandung landslide:

Framlingham College Presentation on the typhoon Morakot disaster in Taiwan

Last night I gave a public lecture on the Typhoon Morakot disaster in Taiwan. The talk may be viewed and downloaded here:

10_02 Framlingham comp

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Massive landslide in West Java, Indonesia

A large landslide occurred yesterday in the Dewata tea plantation area in Pasir Jambu, Southern Bandung in West Java, Indonesia, burying the accommodation for temporary plantation workers. It is estimated that 70 people were buried by the slide. This image, from AP, appears to show the head of the landslide, which looks to be a large but comparatively shallow flow type failure in regolith:


The toe of the slide, including some of the impacted buildings, is shown in this AP image:


News reports suggest that to date 7 bodies have been recovered from the debris, with rescue operations continuing amongst heavy rainfall, which must place the workers at considerable personal risk.

Java consistently appears in the landslide database with very high fatal landslide occurrence. Tea plantations are also areas of high landslide hazard.

A landslide dam in Haiti caused by the earthquake

Thanks to Lynn Highland for the heads-up on this one. The French language website cyberpresse.ca has an article describing a valley blocking landslide triggered by the Haiti earthquake. The translation says:

"The dam is large and there are still several tens of metres before the water passes over it. The problem is that it has hardly rained since the earthquake of January 12. When the rainy season triggers, a few weeks at most, the water will very quickly here...The dam is located in the mountains about ten miles upstream of Grand Goave, a city wedged between the sea and a semi-circle of mountains that lies ahead."

This is a Google Earth image of Grand Goave after the earthquake:

Impressive roadside landslide in Pomona, California

Thanks to reader CConkle for the heads-up on this one. An impressive slide happened this morning by the side of Freeway 10 near to Pamona in California. The slide has completely blocked the road (pictures from the LA Times):




It is uite interesting that the weather does not indicate an obvious trigger for what appears to be a failure on a reprofiled slope. However, California has suffered recent exceptional rainfall in the last few weeks, so it may be progressive failure is the key factor here.

Most recent reports suggest that the slope is still moving and the road is likely to be closed for a week.

An update on the Italian landslide(s)

The large landslide in southern Italy that was graphically caught on camera (see the video in my earlier post) has generated a great deal of interest - indeed this site has had its busiest ever day. Details of the slide are still quite sketchy, but this is what we know so far:

First, the media are confusing two different slides in the same general area of Calabria - in fact there were about 100 altogether, but two are directly affecting towns. The one in the video occurred on the outskirts of Maierato, which is this town:

It appears that the slope had been moving for some days, and there are some indications that it was in distress well before this. The slide appears to have affected the area shown on this image, although I am waiting for clarification of this:

Interestingly, as Jonas van Rutte has pointed out to me, the roads near the headscarp appear to have been recently repaired, judging by the Google Street View images here. No-one was killed or injured in this landslide, although 2300 people have been evacuated from their homes.

The second slide occurred at San Fratello in Sicily, which is this town:

This slide appears to have damaged the centre of the town, leaving 1500 people homeless. The level of damage is high (image from Corriere della Sera):