In October of 2009, a massive landslide in the Nile Valley, near Yakima, Washington, took out a portion of Washington SR 410 and impacted the Naches River as well. This video from WSDOT shows what emergency response was required to get temporary traffic restored on a detour and get a more permanent detour constructed.
Geologic Hazards
Sichuan Earthquake Update
[Updated May 30, 2008] I forgot to publish this post to the front page, whoops! The two links still have excellent information. In particular, Dave’s Landslide Blog has coverage of the many landslide lakes and the efforts to breach some of them. [/Update]
The latest numbers according to AFP, Worldwide News Agency, is 71,000 dead, missing or buried and over 5 million homeless. There were many victims that were buried by landslides and rockfall. In the past few days 200 rescue workers have been buried by mudslides.
For more coverage on landslides related to the earthquake, I recommend Dave’s Landslide Blog. Geology.com also has very comprehensive coverage as well. (AFP Photo)
Failures
Major Slope Failure at Yeager Airport in West Virginia
There was a significant slope failure at the Yeager Airport near Charleston, West Virginia last week. A 2005 project to create an Engineered Material Arresting System (EMAS) at the end of the runway required a […]
Available Resources
Utah Releases Landslide Susceptibility Map
The Utah Geologic Survey has released a "Landslide Susceptibility Map of Utah". They apparently relied quite heavily on GIS based thresholding of existing slope angles but only after they had statistically analyzed failure angles for particular geologic units. So it sounds like they throw the known landslides, the geologic map of Utah and a DEM into the GIS a blend it all up. Perhaps a slight oversimplification!