Pittsburgh Area Has 49 Active Landslides
Geologic Hazards
Giant Boulder Smashes Through Italian Farm
An Italian farmer and his family had an unbelievably close call with some house-sized boulders. You have to see the pictures to believe it. The boulders were dislodged during a landslide on January 21 in Northern Italy. One of the boulders smashed through the barn and courtyard of the farm and cut a swath through their vineyard before stopping near a boulder from some previous rockfall / landslide event. That older boulder is even bigger, about the same size as the entire farmhouse and big enough to be seen on Google Earth! See below or download the KMZ file.
More Photos
[Editor] See more after the break. [/Editor]
Failures
Rabbits causing landslides on tiny Scottish island
Thousands of cute, cuddly rabbits like the one pictured here are having quite an impact on the Scottish Island of Canna. These critters, estimated to number around 16,000 (compared to the human population of 12 […]
Geologic Hazards
SR 87 Landslide Coverage and Update
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)