2023 Black’s Beach Landslide Video – EPIC!

I recently came across some a fascinating EPIC video that captured a landslide more or less from start to finish, a span of around 6 minutes. The landslide occurred in San Diego County, California at Black’s Beach on January 20, 2023. The landslide is a deep-seated one in some relatively complex geology. Shale layers are present, and you can even see the uplift of a buried shale layer at the toe of the slide near the middle to end of the video. Dave Petley noted that although the slide occurred on a sunny day, it was after a series of very intense atmospheric rivers that pounded California around that time.

But what is really fascinating to me is the precursor rockfall and rockslides and smaller slumps that happened in the middle of the slide mass before the most dramatic movement of the slide. It’s rare to capture a single rockfall event on video, but these videos show event after event. For someone like me who finds himself designing rockfall mitigation, it is very instructive!