Deadly Rainfall and Landslides Strike Japan
Record levels of rain fell on Japan’s Noto Peninsula, turning buildings into piles of debris and neighborhoods into streams of floodwaters. Source link
All posts tagged: landslides
Deadly Landslides Hit India
The landslides left behind destruction in Kerala, where some people worked to clear a pile of uprooted trees as muddy waters flowed around a village. Source link
Landslides kill at least 15, displace millions, in Bangladesh and India | Weather News
Hundreds of thousands of people are stranded by flash floods and heavy rains with the country’s refugee camps for Rohingya Muslims being the most affected. Heavy monsoon rains have triggered landslides in Bangladesh and India, killing at least 15 people, injuring several others and displacing millions, according to officials. Eight Rohingya Muslims were among those killed by mudslides in the early hours of Wednesday, Mohammad Shamsud Douza, a senior Bangladesh government official in charge of refugees, said. The disaster is the latest in a series triggered by extreme weather in South Asia and around the globe, with heavy rains and heatwaves having killed many people and caused humanitarian crises in recent months. The refugees died in landslides in southern Bangladesh. More than one million Rohingya live in crowded camps in the border district of Cox’s Bazar, the world’s largest refugee settlement, after fleeing a military crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar in 2017. Amir Jafar, a police official in command of security in the refugee camps, said hundreds had been moved from areas deemed at risk. The …
From parched earth to landslides: crisis in the prosecco hills of Italy | Climate crisis
Paola Ferraro marches through the neat grids of vines that chequer the slopes of Monfumo and rattles off the number of ways violent weather hurts her family’s prosecco production. Spring frost kills buds, summer hail storms thrash leaves, long droughts starve vines of water, while strong rains spark landslides that drown them in mud. In the rugged hills of Asolo, halfway between the canals of Venice and the peaks of the Dolomites, the farmers that produce prosecco, one of the most popular sparkling wines in the world, have been plunged into crisis mode by the tempestuous weather that has arrived with the climate crisis. “It feels like there’s no time,” says Ferraro, from Bele Casel winery, whose grandmother lit candles and prayed during once-rare hail storms that have started to hit earlier in the year and pack more of a punch. “It’s changing so fast.” Luca and Paola Ferraro check landslides caused by heavy rains. Photograph: Stefano Dal Pozzolo/Contrasto/The Guardian Climate change is affecting wine producers everywhere. A study in Nature found that by the …
‘We can’t defeat nature but we can be climate-resilient’: how plant roots can help stop landslides | Flooding
On 14 August 2023, heavy rainfall in north India triggered flash floods and landslides, devastating the region. Kishori Lal, the sarpanch (head) of the Kothi Gehri village in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, recalls the events of that day: “Our link road connecting to the state highway and a few homes along that road were completely devastated.” Torrential downpours in nearby Rewalsar, a picturesque lake town popular with tourists, led to several water bodies bursting their banks. The subsequent flooding and landslides wrecked homes in Lal’s village, necessitating the evacuation of hamlets and severing vital links to the outside world. With roads submerged, the ensuing closure of the Mandi-Rewalsar-Kalkhar Road and link roads left scores of tourists stranded and local communities isolated. Amid this chaos, the resilience of Nog, a village in Bilaspur district, stands out. While roads across the region, including those in and around Kothi Gehri, remained closed, the road leading to Nog was accessible in less than one week, according to officials. The reason lies in an innovative approach: soil bioengineering. …
Patt Morrison: Palos Verdes landslides can say a lot about L.A.’s past
Oh-so-many millennia ago, the Palos Verdes Peninsula arose like Aphrodite, beautiful and dripping wet, from the sea. All right, so it didn’t happen exactly that way. The inexorable wonder-workings of geology — with a fanciful nod to Poseidon, the god of earthquakes and oceans — created that stunning headland that juts its chin out into the Pacific from Los Angeles County. And geology has had a hand in its recent slip-sliding dangers too. (Poseidon: Don’t blame me, mortals!) As the winter rains finally make their way to wherever it is they go for the summer, the peninsula can tally its casualty list from the last eight or nine months. Principally and most recently, the luminous Wayfarers Chapel, a national historic landmark, Lloyd Wright’s marvel of wood and glass in Rancho Palos Verdes, has always seemed to hover above the sea. Now it’s been sidling tragically toward it: It is closed, and probably unlikely to reopen in the same place ever again. A couple of months ago, houses in Rancho Palos Verdes were red-tagged. The landslide …
Weather tracker: Indonesia floods cause landslides and disruption to transport | Indonesia
Semarang, the provincial capital of Central Java in Indonesia, experienced severe flooding overnight on Wednesday. This rainfall was linked to a low-pressure system to the south of Java, which brought close to 200mm of rainfall to the area by Thursday daytime. Further rainfall is forecast over the coming week. Flood depths of up to 80cm have been reported in the old town, with many roads and one railway station closed. There have been 10 reported landslides, and the authorities have advised people who live under clifftops and close to riverbanks to evacuate the area. The mayor of the city issued a statement saying the rainfall, and consequent flooding, was not expected. Similar flooding has been reported in the past, with flood depths of up to 70cm recorded in November 2023, and again earlier that year. It has been suggested that poor drainage in the city is responsible for such severe flooding, with past cases having been linked to rubbish blocking waterways as well as damaged or breached embankments. Some city planners have suggested that construction …
Multiple landslides in Malibu, surrounding areas close PCH
Several active landslides closed Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu on Monday morning, and it wasn’t immediately clear when traffic would be able to pass through again as road crews scrambled to move the boulders and debris. The slides occurred after a series of winter rainstorms drenched Southern California, dumping more than a typical year’s worth of rain on the region in a matter of weeks. The National Weather Service warned about the potential for landslides along the coast earlier this month. Topanga Canyon Boulevard is closed in both directions between PCH and the community of Topanga, the California Department of Transportation announced in a social media post. Motorists will need to detour around the road east of Malibu, also known as State Route 27, because of the debris blocking the road. A second landslide west of State Route 27 at Big Rock Drive forced the closure of PCH on Sunday evening, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced in a separate news alert. Large boulders landed within a few feet of several vehicles parked near …
A new algorithm could help detect landslides in minutes
Landslides can be truly devastating, killing people and animals that can’t get out of the way in time and washing away property. Landslides generally occur during earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or massive rainfall that make a sloped section of land like a cliff unstable. Now, a team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) have developed a new method that could be used to remotely detect large landslides within minutes and tell if the slide is a tsunami hazard. Their method is described in a study published February 9 in the journal The Seismic Record. [Related: California wildfires may give way to massive mudslides.] Monitoring Alaska’s glacial fjords for danger The study cites a 2015 landslide that sent 100 million cubic yards of rock into Alaska’s Taan Fjord. It generated a tsunami that stripped vegetation as high as 620 feet above the waterline. In response, the team helped develop a prototype system capable of real-time detection that has been in place since August 2023 around the Barry Arm section of Prince William Sound. The system uses …
‘Unprecedented’ expansion of landslides in Rancho Palos Verdes
Since 1982, Sallie Reeves and her husband have lived atop a serene Rancho Palos Verdes canyon, overlooking the sparkling Pacific Ocean and Catalina Island, with little reason to worry about the slow-moving landslide complex beneath their feet. “We’ve been here 41 years, never had a problem,” said Reeves, 80. In just the last month, however, their Portuguese Bend home has started shifting under stress from intensifying land movement: Cracks have snaked up their walls, cupboards can no longer close, doorways have split at the seams and brick pavers are separating. “We had no damage until one month ago,” Reeves said. “Now we’re making repairs.” Sallie Reeves looks out at the view from her back deck at the home she has lived in for 41 years in the Portuguese Bend area of Rancho Palos Verdes on Wednesday. (Christina House/Los Angeles Times) It’s far from the worst damage in the neighborhood, yet it’s a clear sign of the landslides’ escalation — fueled by back-to-back winters of heavy rains that experts say have not only accelerated the shifting, …