The largest known undersea landslide occurred over 8,000 years ago off the coast of Norway. The volume of material that moved is mind-blowing, over 4.6 X 1012 cubic yards or 850 cubic miles! Known as the Storegga landslide, the resulting tsunami buried neolithic settlements in Norway with sediment and caused wave runnup in Great Britain that was 80 feet higher than the normal high tide. The devastating loss of human life can only be imagined. Regarding that last question, anthropologists theorized that depending on the time of year when the disaster occured, the loss of life may have been less. During the summer and early autumn, most people in that region would have been in the highlands hunting moose and reindeer. The article linked below is about some interesting forensic geology work to determine the season when the landslide occurred. [Source: Read more at Dispatch.com. Image: “StoreggaFLCommonsZone” by Lamiot – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons]
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More Movement on La Jolla Landslide
For those of you following the landslide in residential La Jolla California known as the Soledad Mountain Road landslide, it made the news again a couple days ago when a section of the slide re-activated and slid 10-ft down the hill. Doesn’t sound like too big of a deal to me, no additional houses damaged. I’m curious how it related to the shear pins they installed a couple of months ago.
Additionally, the San Diego City Attorney has released a report detailing the sequence of events leading up to the landslide. One interesting note is that the Mayor of San Diego is in hot water with the City Attorney’s office for hiring outside legal council to handle the legal aspects of the landslide. According to the City Attorney’s office, he wasn’t allowed to do that, but so far the City Attorney hasn’t stepped in to force the outside attorney(s) to drop the case saying it would open the City up to even more liability.