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
Landslide Tracking Using Social Media
Some clever researchers have devised an algorithm to collect information on landslides occurring around the world by analyzing social media posts. They use a variety of search terms to flag a post as being potentially […]
Project Related
Geotechnical Engineering Challenges of British Columbia’s Sea-to-Sky Highway, gateway to the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been enjoying watching the 2010 Olympic Winter games over the past few days. If you have, you know that Whistler is the venue for many of the sports including alpine skiing, luge, skeleton, bobsled, ski jumping, biathlon and cross-country skiing among others. The Whistler area is located about 50-miles or so North of Vancouver. In order to get to Whistler, you need to drive along Highway 99, better known as the Sea-to-Sky Highway. This highway has a long history of geotechnical problems, including some significant structurally controlled rockslides and landslides. In the years leading up to these Olympic Games a fair amount of work was done on the highway with some significant geotechnical innovations.
Available Resources
Geologic Hazard Photos
The National Geodetic Data Center (NGDC) of NOAA has an online collection of photos of various geologic hazards. Many of the photos are from older sets of 35mm slides that have been digitized. They are free to use provided you credit the photographer and the NGDC as the source. The would be really useful for educators and for powerpoint presentations. The only drawback is that they are in TIF format and some of them could use some retouching. (Photo by University of Colorado, made available by NOAA/NGDC)