Landslide Causes Train to Derail into Mississippi River
Back in March of 2008 there was a landslide that closed SR 87 in between Phoenix, Arizona and Payson. It’s been of great interest to me since it is in my state and affected a highway. I was hoping my firm (NCS Consultants, LLC) might be asked to work on the remediation through our on-call contract but it didn’t happen. Its probably for the best, it sounds like it’s been a troublesome geotechnical engineering problem. Fast forward to last week, and the slide area was in the news again because the slope is still moving and apparently causing some additional deformation of the roadway. (Photo by ADOT)
I had heard about this a while ago through our ADOT contacts, but I make it a policy not to take advantage of my contacts through my day job for GeoPrac.net content (not without permission anyway). So I didn’t want to blog about it until it hit the mainstream media. Last week, the Arizona State Geologist blogged about the SR 87 slide moving again, as did Ken through his AEG Arizona Section blog. It was even covered on one of my favorite blogs, Dave’s Landslide Blog. I finally have a chance to wade through these blog posts and some of the reports and videos to present a summary of the situation, available information and offer my own perspective. (More after the break)
There is nothing funny about landslides, particularly when you consider the tremendous loss of life that happens all the time around the world, most recently in Taiwan, China, Sierra Leone and elsewhere. But the well known humor site, the Onion has taken a pretty good crack at this usually unfunny subject in their video “news” clip Reporter In Helicopter Pretty Sure Landslide Down There Somewhere. Its a very amusing video that’s really about journalists and their attempts to get the scoop about a story, not really about landslides at all. Click through for the embedded video. Happy weekend. […]
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