Massive land slide caught on tape

[Z...]

This is surreal, little reminder how measly humans are when mother Gaia awakens :(

http://vodpod.com/watch/3069195-massive-landslide-in-italy-caught-on-tape

 

[Tigersoap]

Wow, indeed.
And there is nothing you can do but run away, if you can

 

[Laura]

What the heck? What is the reason they give for this landslide? I mean, it just looks like a bunch of land decided to get up and move "over there." That was freaky and creepy!

 

[Bo]

Massive landslide hits town in Italy

Around 200 residents of a southern Italian town have been evacuated after an enormous landslide split the side of a hill.

Broadcaster Sky Italia aired footage of the landslide in the town of Maierato, in the region of Calabria, and of local residents being evacuated.

No deaths were reported.

According to an initial investigation made by Italian civil defence officials, the landslide could have been caused by heavy rains in the Calabria region.

Local residents were evacuated and brought to the police school of Vibo Valentia, the closest city.

Heavy rains in southern Italy caused more than 100 smaller landslides in the Calabria region, according to local reports.

source: _http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20100216/twl-massive-landslide-hits-town-in-italy-41f21e0.html

here is the longer version of the video above.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R__3DYQCVnA

 

[un chien anadolu]

What the heck? What is the reason they give for this landslide? I mean, it just looks like a bunch of land decided to get up and move "over there." That was freaky and creepy!

I watched it on TV. The reason they gave is heavy rain in Calabria area. It is said that there have been around 200 landslides in that area in two weeks . There is also unsual heavy rain and floods in Bulgaria and Northern Turkey. Many towns and some major cities were totally flooded. Also in Madeira Portugal. This is really unusual.

 

[rs]

What the heck? What is the reason they give for this landslide? I mean, it just looks like a bunch of land decided to get up and move "over there." That was freaky and creepy!

Perhaps this is a bit too oblique, but the first thing that came to mind when I read this comment was to reflect on why "networking" works.

Landslides like this occur when a lubricant (i.e. water in the form of rain) permeates an aggregate (i.e. the soil). This happens a lot in California as well, especially after a particularly active fire season.

What has historically prevented this kind of thing is the root system of plants, particularly trees. The death of so many trees is why there are issues with landslides in California, and if you notice in the video, there is a dearth of trees on the landscape that collapses. The root system of trees is a binder, an interlocking system of fibers which provide tensile strength. It is very much like the action of the glass fibers in fiberglass panels used in automobile bodies or boat hulls. The seemingly random interlocking of the root systems and the tensile strength they provide adds stability.

Likewise, it is the same with ideas. A simple aggregation of ideas is unstable and subject to collapse, but when these ideas are networked and connections made, it increases the "tensile strength" and overall stability of the entire system of ideas. Now simple random connections may not contribute to the stability of knowledge but I'm not so sure. If one proceeds on the premise that everything is related, somehow, random connections cease to be truly random. Likewise, is the pattern of glass fibers in fiberglass truly random? Is the roots of the trees truly random? In the case of a fiberglass hull, the construction has a preferred orientation (i.e. on the surface of the hull) and in the case of tree roots, in the presence of water.

For the landslide, water (the lubricant) will not necessarily be uniformly distributed, but will tend to pool in certain areas according to the underground topology. As a consequence, the tree roots will grow into these pools of water because that is what the trees need and ironically this is exactly what is needed to increase the stability, i.e. extra connections in the very place where the lubricant provides the most instability.

Likewise, with networking and exchanging of ideas, the areas of instability attract the most attention and focus and therefore the most interconnections. This adds to the stability of the ideas being processed by the network.

OK, I know, this is WAY off topic, but it just popped into my mind.

 

[rylek]

Wow that was really something. The whole side of the hill turned into liquid. Must have been really scary, nowhere to run if you get caught in it.

I watched it on TV. The reason they gave is heavy rain in Calabria area. It is said that there have been around 200 landslides in that area in two weeks . There is also unsual heavy rain and floods in Bulgaria and Northern Turkey. Many towns and some major cities were totally flooded. Also in Madeira Portugal. This is really unusual.

There was also the Ugandan landslide last week with hundreds of casualties.

 

[dantem]

Don't know if that was the biggest one, but certainly wasn't the first one in that area. And more to it, there have been so many like that all around Italy that I've lost the score. This one was caught on camera and that was it.

Usually Geologists are doing a bad job in these locations where massive landslides occur. Very often their job is almost non-existent as they simply aren't there ...in Italy you can find houses built on volcanoes FYI!