Allegations: Oregon Not Forthcoming With Landslide Hazard Information
Geologic Hazards
Sea to Sky Highway Landslide
Earlier this month, there was a massive slope failure on the "Sea to Sky" highway in British Columbia. It is interesting to note that this same area had a large rockslide in 1965, and a photo of this failure is featured on the cover of the classic text, Rock Slope Engineering by Hoek and Bray. The media played up the aspect that this highway is one of the only ways to access the site of the 2010 Winter Olympic games hosted by Vancouver.
The composite image above shows the book cover and the recent rockslide event (Photo credit: Erik Eberhardt of the University of British Columbia by way of Dave’s Landslide Blog). Dave has done a fabulous job collecting photos, facts and links from around the web. In a follow up post, he added some additional photos and discussion. I recently came across an article that described how the highway originally was slated to have a tunnel bypassing the slide, but that the price tag of $200 million (CAN?) for a 1-km stretch killed the project.
Failures
Homeowners Can’t Nail Builder for Landslide
A federal judge ruled that the property owners can’t sue Pulte homes for the failure of a retaining wall and a subsequent slope movement (they refer to it as a landslide). The failure occurred in […]
Geologic Hazards
Massive Mudslides and Debris Flows in California
Another El Nino storm just moved through Southern California culminating in significant rainfall on Saturday producing mudslides and debris flows in the area hit by this past September’s Station Fire. More after the break. (Photo from Sacramento Bee, David McNew – Getty Images)
Comments are closed.
Clatskanie Landslide
Dear geo blogger,
My take on this slide is that the old railroad crossing or road crossing that held up the water for the Clatskanie Event on or about Jan 11, was not “put to bed”. The crossing should have been destroyed and the abutments pulled out of the channel. The slide volume and extent of travel of the subsequent debris flows would have been much smaller and shorter.
I served for a year as an ERFO Hydrologist at the Detroit Ranger Station, up the Santiam Canyon from Salem in 1997 and 1998. An about-to-retire civil engineer, Bill Day, used the “put to bed” term and practice. He also said something else that was useful, “it takes trees to be twenty years old or more before their root systems hold back natural landslides. The trees on the reforested property above the Clatskanie debris flow section were not that old.
I agree with Bill Burns and, to reinforce his statements, I like what he said about the recent spate of landslides.
John Rehm
Registered Geologist G1137
Salem, Oregon
___________
Note: This is a Opinion based on literature (Dryness, c. 1964), my MS Thesis published on the Rutgers University Geosciences website, and professional experience under registered engineer supervision by Bill Day (1997-1998 (just in case OSBGE is reading this)
Put to bed
Thanks for your insights John. I’ve never heard the term “put to bed” before, but I couldn’t agree with you more. And the factoid about tree root systems seems like a very useful rule of thumb. — Randy Post (aka Rockman)