The picturesque Sea Cliff Bridge South of Sydney, Australia has been built only 7 years and is already threatened by a landslide. Portions of the site have moved 1.5 m since 2006. The Australian Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) department reportedly has three options to consider for stabilizing the bridge, and all three involve the construction of a seawall. The project, which was completed in 2005, was designed to avoid rockfall but was not meant to deal with landslide issues. [Source: Illawarra Mercury. Image: SMH]
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Landslide Videos from Brazil
Dr. Dave has posted links to a few scary landslide videos from the recent heavy rains affecting the Santa Catarina province of Brazil. This latest one shows an ambulance being swept off a road by a “small” landslide. The ease with which the vehicle is moved is quite impressive. It didn’t appear that anyone was injured in this particular landslide but I’m sure there might have been some underwear changing involved. Elsewhere in the region people have not been so lucky and there is a heavy death toll. Click through for two videos.
Devil’s Slide Repair and Tunnel Bypass Presentation
[Updated Thursday May 29, 2009 – 1:00 PM PDT] Added a photo of the AIS Kaiser S2 excavator (spider excavator), and added photos of the Devil’s Slide debris dump where they have put the landslide material removed and the material from the tunnel excavation. [/Update]
Grant Wilcox, Geology Branch Chief with CALTRANS Office of Geotechnical Design West gave a presentation on the Devil’s Slide repair along PCH Highway 1 at the Southwest Geotechnical Engineer’s Conference on May 12 in Phoenix. I’ve posted about the project here before. When I saw Mr. Wilcox, I knew he looked familiar but I couldn’t figure out why. At the beginning of his presentation he made light of his being on You-Tube…then it clicked! He gave a nice overview of the history of the failures, the geology, and the tunnel project. What follows are a few quick tidbits from his talk based on my notes. (Photo via Caltrans site).