10 largest earth slides in the world. The biggest collapse in the history of the earth. The largest in the world

Employees of the American aerospace agency NASA have posted in free access the DRIP-SLIP software package, which allows you to track landslides around the world. The system scans satellite images and determines where a disaster could occur in the near future. /website/

The system is a collection of maps of areas updated at intervals of 24, 48 or 72 hours. This allows you to monitor the situation in real time. The capabilities of the complex are demonstrated on the example of a map of landslides that were recorded from 2007 to 2013.

“We are interested in the rapid and accurate identification of unregistered landslides in order to better understand the nature of their occurrence. This information will allow us to refine the maps that depict the regions most prone to landslides, and take measures to prevent them,” NASA experts noted.

Landslides often go unnoticed and unregistered, which leads to a large number of victims. “We know that a large number of landslides occur during this time period in Nepal. Documenting them is very important in order to better understand why these events occur and what impact they have,” experts say.

Risk zone - Nepal

Scientists pay special attention to Nepal, since landslides in this country are a very urgent problem. Landslides come down here during the monsoon season and lead to the death of tens, and sometimes hundreds of people. One of the most destructive landslides occurred in this country last year after a strong earthquake.

Due to the vibrations of the earth's crust, the mountain slopes collapsed and avalanches of mud rushed from the slopes of the mountains and hills. The largest landslide came down in the Myagdi region, about 140 kilometers from the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu. Landslides also occurred in other regions. People who survived the devastating earthquake died under the layers of sliding earth.

Landslide record holder

Landslides occur in the world quite often. The largest landslide in modern history occurred on February 18, 1911 in the Pamirs in Tajikistan. After a strong earthquake, 2.2 billion cubic meters of loose material slipped from the Muzkolsky ridge, from a height of 5 thousand meters. The impact force of the collapsed mass caused a seismic wave that circled the entire globe several times.

The landslide covered the village of Usoy with all its inhabitants, property and livestock, resulting in the death of 54 people. In addition, the descended mass blocked the Mugrab River, due to which Lake Sarez 4-5 kilometers wide was formed. Over time, the lake grew, flooding the villages of Sarez, Nisor-Dasht and Irkht. At present, the lake still exists, its length and width is already 75 kilometers.

The lake still carries a danger to nearby settlements. This area is located in a seismically active zone, and weak tremors can provoke a breakthrough in Lake Sarez. In the event of a tragedy, a huge mass of water will pass in a mudflow almost to the Aral Sea. About 6 million people live in the potentially dangerous zone.

Most destructive landslide

The most tragic in terms of the number of victims was a landslide that descended in the Chinese province of Gansu in 1920. Most of the territory of this province is occupied by a loess plateau, which is a homogeneous soil mixed with lime, clay and sand. The soil here is fertile, so the area was densely populated. After the earthquake, the connectivity of the loess was broken, and the earthen mass rolled down in whole hills. She filled up everything within a radius of 50 thousand square kilometers.

The situation was aggravated by the fact that everything happened on a winter night, when all the people were in their homes. “The aftershocks followed one after another with an interval of several seconds and merged with the deafening rumble of collapsing houses, the screams of people and the roar of animals that came from under the rubble of buildings,” recalled the miraculously surviving missionary.

One of the houses, driven by a mass of rocks, was moved almost a kilometer. However, the house remained unscathed. The man and child who were there were also not injured. Because of the darkness and noise, they did not even understand what had happened. Along with the house, the section of the road also moved. Now this place is called the "Valley of Death". More than 200 thousand people are buried there.

Landslides in Russia

Scientists consider landslides the most dangerous natural disaster. The danger lies in the fact that they can occur absolutely anywhere where there is a slope. Landslides are not related to geographic location and can occur in any country, including Russia. Most often, residents of the North Caucasus, the Volga region, Primorye, Eastern Siberia and the Urals have to deal with this natural phenomenon.

For example, in 2006, heavy snowfalls and continuous rains in the mountains caused severe landslides in Chechnya. The upper layers of rocks up to two meters thick descended the slopes, burying houses in the villages of Shuani, Benoy, Zandak and others. In Shuan village alone, the landslide destroyed about 60 houses in one day. Residents left their homes, taking with them only documents.

The Russian Black Sea coast is also a risk zone. Mountain slopes, built up with many infrastructure facilities, create favorable conditions for the occurrence of landslides. Especially the danger increases in the autumn-winter period, when the mountain slopes are washed away by rains. Active human activity, including construction and impact on the landscape, is also an additional risk factor.

Unlike landslides, landslides come off less steep slopes. Their movement occurs smoothly, calmly for hours, days and even months.

The river water that seeped into the depths of the earth's crust acts treacherously. It impregnates layers of loose sediments, moistens clays. Often such a moistened layer plays the role of a lubricant between the layers of the earth, and the upper layer, as if on a sled, begins to slide, float down. Small landslides are called - mudslides, mudslides.

THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF LANDSLIDE VICTIMS

On December 16, 1920, an earthquake triggered a landslide on a mountain in Gansu Province (China), killing 180,000 people under it.

LARGE LANDSLIDES IN RECENT YEARS

Several hundred people died on March 29, 1994, when prolonged rains near the city of Cuenca in Ecuador caused a landslide that buried the mining village.

In June 1997, in the Chinese province of Yanan, two landslides in gold mines killed 227 miners.

In September 2002, in the Karmadon Gorge (North Ossetia), as a result of a huge glacier and a landslide, more than a hundred people died, including the film crew of S. Bodrov Jr.

LANDSLIDE THAT SWALLOWED THE CITY

The city of Sainte Jeanne-Viannie in the Canadian province of Quebec was completely abandoned after a landslide in May 1971. The city was built in the 17th century by the first settlers - in a secluded depression on the edge of a giant slope. Its inhabitants lived without any natural disasters for several hundred years. And on May 4, 1971, the first sign of an impending threat followed, when livestock refused to enter the fields on the edge of the city: most likely, the animals felt slight ground vibrations. That same night, a huge landslide moved in. Roads, vehicles and houses were swallowed up by a huge wave of mud 15 meters high, which spread over 15 kilometers within three hours. As a result, 31 people died, and the city is still empty due to the strong movements of the layers of clay lying under it.

THE BIGGEST LANDSLIDE IN THE HISTORY OF ITALY

The Piave River Valley is located in northern Italy and thanks to E. Hemingway's novel "Farewell to Arms!" familiar to millions of people. During the First World War, the Italian army was located here, acting against the Austrians after their defeat at Caporetto. On October 9, 1963, at 11:15 p.m., a terrible natural disaster occurred - the entire valley of the Piave River was flooded. There were reports that the 260-metre-high Valmoth Dam collapsed under the onslaught of a massive landslide caused by the earthquake.

The world's tallest dam, more than 20 meters thick, withstood the earthquake. It collapsed a bit later. As the surviving witnesses of the disaster recall, the roar that was heard before the huge water shaft hit the valley had a different origin. It came from the cracked mountains on either side of the dam. There is evidence of Captain Fred Mickelson, a US military helicopter pilot who took out the inhabitants of the village of Kasso. The village stood above the dam and was in danger of residual landslides. He described the event as follows: “Behind the dam there was a lake about two kilometers long, but now it is no more. The rock tops on either side of the dam fell into the lake and literally filled it.”

The water displaced from the lake poured through the dam, destroying it, and in a giant waterfall 450 meters high at a right angle poured into the valley of the Piave River.

Longaron, a village located on the path of a water stream, disappeared instantly. 3,700 out of 4,000 inhabitants died. Only the bell tower, the cemetery chapel and one house survived in Pigaro. Until now, no one lives in the village.

THE MOST TERRIBLE LANDSLIDE IN EUROPE

For centuries, mountains of waste rock have grown in the vicinity of mining towns, such as Aberfan, in Wales (England), being an integral attribute of mines. Due to their composition, such mountains are very unstable and mobile. In Aberfan, a stream flowed under the mountain, which, washing away the base, further reduced its stability. A few days before the disaster, local residents noticed some movement on the mountain and notified the authorities.

On the morning of October 21, 1966, a representative of the municipal government went up the mountain to check the information received. While he was inspecting the mountain, suddenly two million tons of rock started to move and fell on the city. The roar was heard several kilometers from the town. Rescue work began immediately, the miners rose to the surface and, together with the townspeople, began excavations. 43 people died - mostly children who were at the school at that moment.

LANDSLIDE, detachment and sliding movement of the rock mass down the slope; the mass of displaced rock itself. O. are common in regions where weak plastic and impermeable rocks are overlain by relatively strong permeable ones. The weakening of the strength of rocks is caused by natural causes (increase in the steepness of the slope, washing away its foundations by waves and as a result of river erosion, waterlogging of soils with melt and rain waters, infiltration pressure in the rock mass caused by fluctuations in sea level, reservoir or water in the river, seismic tremors, etc. ) or human intervention (destruction of slopes by mountain and road cuts, overgrazing or irrigation, deforestation, improper agricultural practices on slope agricultural land, construction load on the edge or upper part of the slope, etc.). Occurrence and activation are facilitated by the technogenic rise in the level of groundwater on the banks of reservoirs. O. are displaced along the slope by several meters, often by tens and hundreds of meters. The volume of shifting rocks ranges from several tens of m 3 to 1 billion m 3 . Large lakes are formed on slopes with a steepness of St. 15° away from watersheds, often occur on the sides of valleys, high shores of seas, lakes and reservoirs. They retain a certain coherence and solidity inside the landslide body; their thickness reaches 10–20 m or more. Small lakes everywhere transform the sides of ravines. O. are often located on a slope in several tiers (for example, in the valley of the Moscow River).

In terms of plan, O. often have the shape of a crescent, forming a depression in the slope (the so-called landslide cirque). Shallow cirque-shaped dents on the steep slopes of valleys and gullies - wasps - appear as a result of surface displacements of highly moistened loamy masses, especially when snow slowly melts on shady slopes. After the separation and descent of the O., a bare surface or niche remains on a steep slope - a landslide ledge. Landslide breccia accumulates at the foot of the slope. A pressure landslide swell may occur in front of the front of the moving lake. O.'s tongue often protrudes into the water area of ​​a watercourse or body of water, changing the configuration of the coastline. The base of the landslide is the bottom of the slope or a separate flattened section of the slope, where the movement of landslide masses stops. Free sliding of the landslide body occurs if the shifting blocks are developed above the base of the landslide, in the case when the thickness of plastic rocks lies below, these rocks are squeezed out, accompanied by their movement against the general slope (O. extrusion I). O., which have not lost the natural composition of rocks in their blocks, are referred to as structural O. In "cutting x" O., the sliding surface cuts off different layers of rocks. When fine particles of fine earth are washed out from the base of an lake by spring waters, weakening the stability of the overlying rocks, it is classified as suffusion O. (widely distributed on slopes with a steepness of 10–18 °). Possible landslide-flows with a fluid consistency of the soil, their volume can reach millions of m 3. Small surface, water-saturated lakes—slushes (up to several meters wide and 0.3 to 1.5 m deep) form under conditions of excessive moisture to a plastic (mud-like) or fluid state.

Slopes subject to landslide processes are characterized by pseudo-terraces (often with a reverse slope), mounds, swampy closed or poorly drained semi-closed depressions, and other forms of landslide relief, as well as a specific type of vegetation (for example, the so-called drunken forest). Gap cracks are observed in O.'s body. In the European part of Russia, lakes are distributed along the sides of the valleys of large rivers (especially the Volga and its tributaries), reservoirs, and along the Black Sea coast. Powerful landslide activity marked the coasts of the Black Sea - in the Crimea, near the city of Odessa (Ukraine) and in Adzharia (Georgia). A wide strip of ocean stretches for hundreds of kilometers along the coasts of the Mangyshlak Peninsula (Kazakhstan). Landslide danger is noted in most mountainous countries (the eastern periphery of Tibet, the Himalayas, etc.). O., descended from the sides of mountain valleys, often form temporary dams that dam the river, with the formation of a landslide lake. The catastrophic consequences of a flood wave arising from the destruction of such a dam are many times greater than the negative consequences of the displacement of the lake itself. lands, industrial enterprises, settlements, etc. To combat them, bank protection and drainage works, forest plantations, and slopes are being fixed with piles.

On relatively steeply sloping sections of the bottom of the oceans, seas, and deep lakes in seismically and volcanically active zones, as well as on the frontal slopes of underwater deltas (as a result of sharp differences in sedimentation rates), underwater lakes are found; one of the largest is the Sturegga landslide in the Norwegian Sea (length approx. 800 km, width 290 km). Submarine seas can cause submarine cables to break, which has repeatedly happened, in particular, at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Table. Catastrophic landslides*

*The table shows landslides that led to large-scale destruction (including on the seabed), or to numerous human casualties, or to a radical negative change in the natural landscape.

In the mountains, 27 tourist bases and 49 registered tourist groups were cut off, consisting of more than 500 people, including 133 foreigners -. After a mudflow in the Elbrus region of Kabardino-Balkaria, three cars fell into the Baksan River, in which two people were rescued, three more are being searched for by rescuers.

August 18, 2017 showers and thunderstorms with hail (Crimea). A mudflow with mud flooded households, vehicles, communications in the village of Krasnokamenka (Kizil-Tash) in the Sudak region, and the elements also damaged vineyards near Sudak. Mudflow damaged about 42 hectares of vineyards, 15 of which were completely washed away.

On the night of June 22, 2016, a rock after heavy rains leading to the Shatoi and Itum-Kalinsky regions of Chechnya, blocking the passage of vehicles. 27 mountain settlements with a population of about 16 thousand people were cut off from the outside world. The landslide blocked a section of the road about 50 meters long and up to six meters wide.

On June 9, 2016, as a result of rainstorms that took place in Chechnya and Dagestan, 65 residential buildings were flooded or damaged by mudflows. 125 people were relocated to a temporary accommodation facility. Water of the automobile bridge in the Shali district of Chechnya. Mudflows blocked road communication with seven settlements in the Shatoisky district of the republic.

On October 15, 2015, about 350 cubic meters of mud and stone mass descended, according to updated data, onto the railway track between Dagomys and Sochi, which. On the railway tracks from the side of the slope, the soil reached a level of more than one meter. From the side of the sea, the movement of trains was hindered by trees felled during the descent of the ground. 122 people and 15 units of equipment were involved in the elimination of the consequences of the incident.

On July 20, 2014, in the Adler region, a mudflow came down on the road in Krasnaya Polyana near the technological tunnel behind the Rosa Khutor ski resort. Twenty cars, in which there were more than a hundred people, 50 people were evacuated by rescuers, another 40 people wished to stay near their cars. It took about two days for the road services to eliminate the consequences of the mudflow. On July 27, the second mudflow in a week came down on the road in Krasnaya Polyana. Several cars .

On June 28, 2014, heavy rains occurred in the Tunkinsky district of Buryatia. To the village of Arshan, where almost 3 thousand people live, from the mountains along the bed of the river Kyngarga. Five streets were flooded. One person died. According to the republican authorities, a total of 112 houses fell into the emergency zone, 15 of which were completely destroyed. The damage amounted to hundreds of millions of rubles.

On the night of October 10, 2012, as a result of past heavy rains that caused mudflows in Derbent (Dagestan), they were flooded. . In total, 1.12 thousand people fell into the flood zone.

On August 29, 2009, after three days of rain in the vicinity of Karamken, Magadan Region, a mudflow, which serves as a diversion channel for the storage of waste rock (tailings) of the former gold mining plant. The mud flow blocked the channel of the Tumanny, water poured into the Khasyn River, the level of which began to rise rapidly, after which the dam of the Karamken GOK broke through. As a result, the water flow demolished 11 prefabricated houses in Karamken, one person died, one woman went missing.

On June 15, 2008, a mudflow descended onto a road near the village of Zagardon, Alagirsky district of North Ossetia, completely in the Kurtatinsky gorge, about 50 cars, in which there were about 150 people. In the evening of the same day, the track was completely unblocked, the road service equipment broke a track, along which cars could leave the gorge.

On the night of 17 houses were damaged as a result of a mudflow in the upper part of the village of Bulungu in the Chegemsky district of Kabardino-Balkaria, eight of which were completely destroyed. Mudflow also demolished outbuildings, transport and livestock. Of the 11 missing villagers, ten were found.

In June 2007, a landslide came down in the Valley of Geysers in Kamchatka, as a result of which seven geysers were under the rubble, and about a dozen were flooded by a dammed lake. Subsequently, most of the geysers resumed their work, new outlets of hot springs formed. In September 2013, the flooded geysers Skalisty and Artifact flooded again. In January 2014, a mudflow of clay, water and snow again transformed the Valley of Geysers in Kamchatka. A stream of clay, water and snow washed away the observation deck near the geyser Schel. The mode of operation of the largest geyser in the Kronotsky Reserve, Velikan, has temporarily changed.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti

Landslides most commonly occur when the bedrock, composed of limestone or other carbonate rock, is "eaten" by acidic groundwater, sags after heavy rainfall, or is damaged by burst pipes. Such sudden collapses are especially dangerous, for obvious reasons, in cities where entire houses can suddenly go underground. Below you will find photos from the sites of the largest collapses of the earth's surface in recent decades:

In May 1981, this giant hole formed in the city of Winter Park (Florida). The local authorities decided, having strengthened the edges, to turn the resulting pit into a picturesque city lake.

In this hole (18 m deep, 60 m long and 45 m wide) in 1995, two houses of the fashionable district of San Francisco failed.

In 1998, after unusually heavy rains and a rupture of a sewer pipe in San Diego, a giant crack formed. Its length is about 250 meters, width - 12 meters and depth - more than 20 meters.

In 2003, rescuers had to pull this bus out with a crane after it suddenly fell into the ground on a street in Lisbon (Portugal).

This hole swallowed up in February 2007 several houses in the capital of Guatemala. Three people are missing.

Bird's eye view.

In March 2007, in the Italian city of Gallipoli, a road collapsed into a network of underground caves underneath.

In September 2008, a car driving along a street in the Chinese province of Guangdong suddenly found itself in a hole 5 meters deep and 15 meters wide.

This giant crater formed in May 2010 in Guatemala City after Tropical Storm Agatha swept through it.

The same funnel from a closer distance.

In May 2012, due to a collapse of soil on the roadway in the Chinese province of Shaanxi, this hole appeared 15 meters long, 10 meters wide and 6 meters deep.

And another landslide in Shaanxi (6 meters deep and 10 meters wide) damaged three gas pipes and one water pipe in December 2012.

This gigantic sinkhole was formed one of the December nights of 2012 in southern Poland. Its depth is about 10 meters, width is about 50 meters.

In January 2013, part of a rice field in the Chinese province of Hainan fell into the ground. There have been about 20 such incidents in the county in the previous four months.

The most catastrophic collapses in America

A selection of photographs from the sites of the largest collapses of the earth's surface in recent decades in America.