According to JapanToday, the death toll from the Typhoon Morakot caused mudslides and related damage could be as high as 600 after the typhoon dumped over 2-meters of rain (79-inches!) on the island nation. The mudslide that virtually destroyed the entire village of Hsiao-lin (guardian.co.uk) or Shiaolin (Japan Today) could have as many as 400-500 of those casualties. Most rescue efforts have been halted, but many people are still missing and possibly buried under mudslide and landslide debris as the Taiwanese President is coming under fire for his handling of disaster. (AP Photo via Guardian.co.uk)
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Devil’s Slide is an infamous landslide along California’s Highway 1 or Pacific Coast Highway near Pacifica, just south of the San Francisco Bay area. Caltrans’ Devil’s Slide Tunnel project is an effort to bypass that slide and make the heavily traveled roadway safe for drivers and to eliminate the maintenance and traffic hassles caused by slope failures blocking the road. We first covered the project back in September of 2007 when the tunnel portion of the project commenced. In that post, you can find a Google Earth KML File showing the location of the tunnels and the new bridges associated with the project. In this post, I’ll provide you with some updated progress information as well as some background on the geotechnical and other aspects of the project. More links and videos are at the end of the post. (Photo by Kim Komenich, San Francisco Chronicle). […]