A dramatic landslide video from Chongzhou in Sichuan Province, China

The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides.

The Weather Channel has published a video of a dramatic rockslide that occurred on 27 September 2023 at Chongzhou in Sichuan Province, China. The pure volume of landslide videos that emerge these days means that I rarely post them now, but occasionally one comes along that is worth seeing, This appears to qualify.

I can find little information about the landslide, even on Chinese language sites, but the video can be viewed on Youtube:-

The Weather Channel website has a slightly better version of the Chongzhou rockslide on its pages. I have a suspicion that in the central part it might have been speeded up a little, but I am unsure?

Rockslides onto roads, such as this, are clearly immensely dangerous. The saving grace here is the smaller slides that clearly occurred ahead of the main failure. This is common, but not always the case. It does remind us to be extremely cautious when coming across freshly fallen blocks.

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