Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Selects: How Landslides Work

Transcript

Selects: How Landslides Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, do you know the song Landslide sung by
0:03
Speaker 1: Stevie Nicks. Well, this is not that. This is a
0:06
Speaker 1: podcast about real landslides and how they work. And it's
0:09
Speaker 1: my pick for the Saturday Select. It's a good episode
0:11
Speaker 1: and it was from March. Check it out. Welcome to
0:19
Speaker 1: Stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
0:28
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W.
0:32
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant is with me as always. Hello, sir, Hello,
0:35
Speaker 1: how are you. I'm good. We've got Jerry in the house.
0:38
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this one, uh, you know, I probably won't
0:41
Speaker 1: be our funniest podcast. And I have to say that
0:47
Speaker 1: I suggested landslides without knowing about that landslide. No, I swear, no,
0:54
Speaker 1: I promise you. I sent this to you on Monday,
0:57
Speaker 1: and then I saw like a few hours later, wow,
1:01
Speaker 1: and it was like, oh boy, I didn't you know.
1:03
Speaker 1: I was. I was on vacation, so I didn't hear
1:05
Speaker 1: about it. Um. But yeah, so it's super relevant. Well, yeah,
1:10
Speaker 1: it is apparently unintentionally relevant like our black Boxes episode. Yeah,
1:14
Speaker 1: it's been happening weirdly. But yeah, if you have been
1:19
Speaker 1: uh not paying attention to the news at all lately.
1:23
Speaker 1: Then you may not know, but there was a massive
1:26
Speaker 1: landslide in Washington as of last count I think, um,
1:30
Speaker 1: the death tolls at like twenty four which is an
1:33
Speaker 1: astoundingly high number for a landslide, uh, at least in
1:38
Speaker 1: the United States, because something like twenty five to thirty
1:41
Speaker 1: five people die in the US a year from landslides.
1:45
Speaker 1: This one was one single, enormous landslide. And if you
1:49
Speaker 1: haven't seen the pictures to get an idea of just
1:53
Speaker 1: how large it was, you should go online immediately, um
1:58
Speaker 1: and check it out because it's it was nuts what
2:01
Speaker 1: happened there. Yeah, it's about an hour north of Seattle,
2:04
Speaker 1: and I know we have a lot of fans in Seattle,
2:05
Speaker 1: so we're obviously thinking about everyone there. But um, it
2:08
Speaker 1: is you know, there's still you know, a hundred and
2:11
Speaker 1: seventy plus people missing, and it's it's it looks like
2:14
Speaker 1: it will be easily the deadliest landslide in US history
2:18
Speaker 1: by the time this is all said and done. It
2:19
Speaker 1: seems like it. But I'm clearly hoping there's more survivors.
2:23
Speaker 1: But it's just a scary man. Oh yeah, to think
2:26
Speaker 1: about like being trapped like that. And possibly still alive.
2:29
Speaker 1: It's just like the whole thing is upsetting. Yeah, because
2:32
Speaker 1: I mean, if you were inside a structure it's now
2:35
Speaker 1: covered with mud, you might you know, there's a chance
2:38
Speaker 1: that you are you're not buried, the structure around you
2:41
Speaker 1: is buried. Um. So yeah, it's uh, it's pretty awful stuff. Yeah. Um,
2:48
Speaker 1: the to me, it's even more awful. And I read
2:51
Speaker 1: an article where a resident, unnamed resident was saying like, yeah,
2:55
Speaker 1: we're not mad at the authorities, but yeah, apparently they
2:58
Speaker 1: didn't heat a lot of UM warnings. This area, the
3:04
Speaker 1: area that was covered in the landslide was known since
3:09
Speaker 1: the sixties. In the area is Slide Hill that the
3:13
Speaker 1: area itself is called the Steelhead Landslide. So like imagine if, um,
3:18
Speaker 1: the street you live on is is not an East Lake,
3:23
Speaker 1: but in Steelhead Landslide, the landslide is in the name
3:27
Speaker 1: of the area that you live. So it wasn't like
3:29
Speaker 1: the biggest surprise. No, And there was a report by
3:33
Speaker 1: the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers that predicted a
3:36
Speaker 1: UM the potential for a large catastrophic failure right there
3:42
Speaker 1: where it happened, And that's exactly what happened. The landslide happened.
3:45
Speaker 1: It covered about a square mile and um is like
3:51
Speaker 1: fifteen feet deep. Right now, Well, you can't tell people
3:54
Speaker 1: where to live though, you know, no, you definitely can't.
3:57
Speaker 1: I'm not saying they shouldn't have warned, but like people
3:59
Speaker 1: still live in flood zones and people still build their
4:02
Speaker 1: houses on the sides of a hill in Malibu, and yeah,
4:05
Speaker 1: and I guess if you're warned and like you were
4:07
Speaker 1: willing to take that risk and you wanted to, then yeah,
4:10
Speaker 1: I don't want to disagree with that, but I I
4:12
Speaker 1: don't know if um, I don't know if everybody was
4:16
Speaker 1: as aware of the potential. But apparently there was a
4:19
Speaker 1: landslide in the area as recently as two thousands six. Yeah,
4:23
Speaker 1: so apparently this was the big one and it was
4:26
Speaker 1: coming a long time and that and set off by
4:28
Speaker 1: water in this case, right. Yeah, there was word that
4:31
Speaker 1: possibly it was an earthquake, but they think though it was. Um,
4:34
Speaker 1: there was a lot of rain that that came before then.
4:37
Speaker 1: And so well, let's let's get down to explaining what
4:40
Speaker 1: happened exactly. The landslide there is actually technically a mud slide.
4:45
Speaker 1: UM and mud slides landslides, a bunch of other ones.
4:49
Speaker 1: They're all they all fall under something called mass movements. Yeah,
4:53
Speaker 1: and that is, uh, the umbrella term, and that basically
4:56
Speaker 1: means gravity is at work moving something down a slope,
5:00
Speaker 1: some kind of sediment. Um, it can be a landslide,
5:03
Speaker 1: which can it is obviously devastating, or it can be
5:05
Speaker 1: super slow over centuries. And we'll get into all that
5:09
Speaker 1: in a minute. But um, and well we'll get into
5:13
Speaker 1: all the triggers too. But I guess we should talk
5:15
Speaker 1: about their categorized depending on how fast it's moving, um,
5:21
Speaker 1: what kind of materials are being moved. Um. In every
5:25
Speaker 1: case though, you're talking about soil moving off of bedrock,
5:30
Speaker 1: the friction being overcome by gravity. That's exactly what a
5:34
Speaker 1: landslide is. And it's like super fast erosion. Yeah, on
5:37
Speaker 1: any slope you have soil over rock and it's being
5:40
Speaker 1: held in place by friction. It's kind of scary to
5:43
Speaker 1: think about it, really is. You know it's true, but
5:45
Speaker 1: then when you read it, it's like wow. Yeah. I mean,
5:48
Speaker 1: like if you've ever like dug a hole in the ground, Yeah,
5:51
Speaker 1: it's not easy. It's not like it's not like silt
5:56
Speaker 1: or something like that it's it's like ground, it's hard ground.
5:59
Speaker 1: But you know that stuff is it's not fused to
6:03
Speaker 1: the bedrock beneath it's it's there's there's a kind of um.
6:07
Speaker 1: There's a friction that's holding it in place, and that
6:10
Speaker 1: can that can fail. And that's that's what a landslide is.
6:14
Speaker 1: Exactly like you said, gravity overcomes friction. Yeah, and it
6:17
Speaker 1: can on some very large scales, it can on small scales. Um.
6:21
Speaker 1: And then like you said, depending on the type of movement,
6:25
Speaker 1: how it moves, what's moved. You have different categories of
6:29
Speaker 1: mass movements. Landslides are just one of them, or a
6:31
Speaker 1: slide is one category. There slides, creeps, slumps, and flows. Yeah,
6:38
Speaker 1: creeps are um obviously super slow. It can be uh
6:42
Speaker 1: months years, it can be centuries of creep. And that
6:45
Speaker 1: is when the sediment uh when the friction is is
6:50
Speaker 1: not working, but it's not completely destroyed, so there's still
6:53
Speaker 1: some friction. It's just moving super slow. And that's usually
6:57
Speaker 1: as a result of a lot of freezing and bowing
7:01
Speaker 1: going on to change the composition of the soil. Yeah.
7:04
Speaker 1: When the when a freeze comes through the sediment in
7:09
Speaker 1: a soil, um is pushed upward as it freezes, and
7:13
Speaker 1: when it thaws, it falls back downward. So what you
7:16
Speaker 1: have if you look at it on a geological time scale,
7:20
Speaker 1: is basically an undulation up and down of the soil
7:24
Speaker 1: that is moving downward on a slope like millimeters at
7:27
Speaker 1: a time. Right, and then uh, the telltale signs though
7:31
Speaker 1: you can see that creep is happening, because telephone poles
7:35
Speaker 1: will be kind of a skew trees or something like that. Yeah,
7:39
Speaker 1: that means that you're standing on or looking at a
7:43
Speaker 1: slumping slope and you won't see it happening. No, but
7:47
Speaker 1: I can see a pretty awesome gift. I can't remember
7:49
Speaker 1: where was it? Time lapse? Yeah, it's a time lapse gift.
7:53
Speaker 1: And it wasn't over the course of a year. Is
7:55
Speaker 1: over the course of I think several days in San
7:56
Speaker 1: Bernardino or what. Everybody's just like whoa there goes. It
8:00
Speaker 1: makes you feel unstable, Yeah, like the earth beneath your feet. Yeah, well,
8:05
Speaker 1: I mean the the earth is a constantly evolving mass.
8:09
Speaker 1: You know, soil is being moved from here to there,
8:12
Speaker 1: and there's all sorts of different agents of change, but
8:14
Speaker 1: and it moves in different ways it can creep. Yeah. Um,
8:18
Speaker 1: I think I said a slumping slope. That's not true.
8:20
Speaker 1: That was a creeping slope. Yes. A slump is when
8:24
Speaker 1: you have a big chunk that breaks off as a
8:27
Speaker 1: single whole chunk and moves. That's a slump. Yeah, And
8:31
Speaker 1: that can be the actual thing can be called a
8:34
Speaker 1: slump too. It can have a couple of meanings there
8:37
Speaker 1: for that word, like the big piece can be called
8:39
Speaker 1: a slump, or if the movement is the slump, if
8:42
Speaker 1: they're not sliding like they used to slump uh, And
8:47
Speaker 1: that is when um basically the base can't support this
8:52
Speaker 1: big chunk on top of it. And again it's usually
8:55
Speaker 1: due to uh. Moisture and water is the general cause
9:00
Speaker 1: for slumps as well. Yeah, waters, like the primary all
9:03
Speaker 1: time leading winning is cause of mass movements because either
9:09
Speaker 1: like um in a slump. A good uh analogy or
9:13
Speaker 1: a good example is if you're at the beach and
9:15
Speaker 1: you just see like a whole um, a whole hunk
9:18
Speaker 1: of wet sand cheer off of another hunk of wet
9:21
Speaker 1: sand that you just witnessed the slump And actually water
9:25
Speaker 1: can create stability for sandy, loamy or clay soil. Yeah,
9:30
Speaker 1: like you build a sandcastle, you want the sand wet
9:32
Speaker 1: exactly up to a point when you had too much
9:35
Speaker 1: water becomes saturated, and then you have a slump or
9:37
Speaker 1: you have a slider, a flow um. And then with
9:40
Speaker 1: other types of mass movement, that water can get underneath
9:45
Speaker 1: and interrupt the friction between the soil and the bedrock.
9:49
Speaker 1: And that's when you have some sort of movement as well.
9:52
Speaker 1: So that's creep and that's slump. And then finally we
9:55
Speaker 1: have flow, which is uh just basically a soupy x
10:00
Speaker 1: of water and rock and uh soil and other materials,
10:04
Speaker 1: and it's just those are usually the deadliest because it
10:07
Speaker 1: spread further. That's like a mud flower an avalanche. They
10:10
Speaker 1: get everywhere, they'll like enter into everything. It's not just
10:14
Speaker 1: it's just like a bunch of dirt. It's it's like
10:16
Speaker 1: a river moving, a fast moving river of mud in debris.
10:22
Speaker 1: And I misspoke earlier. That's um in oh So, Washington.
10:28
Speaker 1: That's what that's what that was. That was the mud
10:31
Speaker 1: flow that started it, that came down and covered everything
10:36
Speaker 1: mud which actually hampered rescue UM operations because apparently it's
10:41
Speaker 1: just like quicksand right now, suck you right in. Yeah,
10:45
Speaker 1: so in the case of well, in the case of
10:48
Speaker 1: anything other than a creep or slump, if you're talking
10:51
Speaker 1: about a quick landslide, it happens just like in a snap.
10:57
Speaker 1: It's it's going and picking up speed. But it is
11:00
Speaker 1: the result of years and years of of like slow
11:06
Speaker 1: steady erosion Blassically, it's not something that just happens out
11:10
Speaker 1: or it can be triggered. We'll talk about like earthquakes
11:13
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, but in general, it's the weathering
11:16
Speaker 1: down of objects. And I guess the difference we should
11:21
Speaker 1: describe between weathering and erosion is erosion is transporting the
11:25
Speaker 1: weather material and weathering is is the actual wearing down
11:28
Speaker 1: of that material. So they're different. Yeah. So if you
11:31
Speaker 1: have a rock that's a nice, big solid piece, millions
11:35
Speaker 1: of years later, it's been weathered into a bunch of soil,
11:40
Speaker 1: and then as as as it's lost its composition, it
11:43
Speaker 1: can move more easily, and when it moves, it's being eroded.
11:46
Speaker 1: So erosion is the is the process of movement. The
11:51
Speaker 1: weathering is everything that leads up to that ability for
11:54
Speaker 1: it to be moved. Yeah, and weathering is important because
11:57
Speaker 1: it's you're weathered landscape is going to be much more
12:01
Speaker 1: likely the landslide. Um. That's why you'll see them in
12:05
Speaker 1: more extreme environments where you get like tons of rain
12:08
Speaker 1: or like a lot of snow maybe Uh, heat, cold water,
12:11
Speaker 1: and oxygen. Those are all things that impact weathering. The
12:14
Speaker 1: cause weathering. And there's there's two types of weathering. There's
12:17
Speaker 1: mechanical weathering and there's chemical weathering. And mechanical weathering is basically, um,
12:22
Speaker 1: the material is broken down, but it retains its same
12:26
Speaker 1: chemical composition. Right it was. It's still the rock, but
12:30
Speaker 1: it was broken down into smaller pieces of itself, um,
12:34
Speaker 1: say by wind or something like that, or water lapping
12:38
Speaker 1: against it. Now, if you had that pieces of those
12:41
Speaker 1: pieces of rock that were in water that ultimately, over
12:44
Speaker 1: the course of years dissolved it, it would be in
12:47
Speaker 1: solution and it would no longer chemically resemble itself. That's
12:51
Speaker 1: chemical weathering. So like if you pour acid on your hand, Uh,
12:57
Speaker 1: it's gonna reconstitute into something else on the other and
13:00
Speaker 1: the hole that burns through it, the stuff ends up
13:03
Speaker 1: on the table is not really the same thing as
13:05
Speaker 1: your hand. You just chemically weathered your hand. That's a
13:09
Speaker 1: pretty extreme example. UM. And then you talked about the
13:13
Speaker 1: constant state of movement on the earth that's going on
13:17
Speaker 1: at all times. And that's basically, if you're gonna have erosion,
13:20
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a deposit somewhere. And it's just a
13:23
Speaker 1: constant cycle on the earth of weathering carried away by
13:27
Speaker 1: erosion and being put somewhere else in in cases of
13:31
Speaker 1: landslides the bottom of hills. Yeah, when we toward Guatemala,
13:36
Speaker 1: you Jerry and I and um Or I should say me, um,
13:40
Speaker 1: we we're at the site of a landslide that had happened. Um,
13:44
Speaker 1: I will never forget. Yeah, And they you know, you
13:47
Speaker 1: could still see in the sort of h jungle like forest,
13:51
Speaker 1: the swath that had been cut through years earlier, because
13:54
Speaker 1: all the stuff on either side was old growth and
13:57
Speaker 1: then the stuff through the land slide slow was Yeah,
14:01
Speaker 1: it was like it was much younger, shorter, like a
14:04
Speaker 1: different kind of green as well. And they pointed out
14:07
Speaker 1: that we were like twelve feet higher than uh basically
14:10
Speaker 1: standing on uh. Yeah, the old village they were unable
14:16
Speaker 1: to recover about two fifty people. It was really upsetting. Yeah,
14:20
Speaker 1: and I remember their children were running around, all these
14:22
Speaker 1: orphan children. Um, like they were just kind of they
14:26
Speaker 1: belonged to the remaining village. Now it was really something else.
14:30
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and just when they said, like you're like
14:32
Speaker 1: twelve feet higher than just the whole land raised up
14:36
Speaker 1: because of this month's line. It was one of those
14:38
Speaker 1: ones that like you just kind of chewed on for
14:39
Speaker 1: a little while before you finally understood like the full
14:41
Speaker 1: gravity of it. Even though like while while I was
14:44
Speaker 1: standing there, I was like, oh, this is nuts. And
14:46
Speaker 1: the more I thought about it, think the nut of
14:48
Speaker 1: your got uh So the sediment um, we we talked
14:53
Speaker 1: about the deposition at the bottom of the hill. The
14:55
Speaker 1: sediment is known as talus, right, let's the official word
14:59
Speaker 1: for it when when it's from a landslide. Yeah, yeah,
15:02
Speaker 1: that's what's being carried down. And um, with erosion, there
15:05
Speaker 1: are five different things that can act on it, which
15:07
Speaker 1: are water, which we've covered in wind and then gravity
15:11
Speaker 1: of course which we mentioned, and then waves and glaciers too.
15:13
Speaker 1: And technically gravity is a part of all of them, right, Yeah,
15:17
Speaker 1: that's true, a part of all mass movement. But um,
15:21
Speaker 1: those five agents of erosion, there are different things that
15:24
Speaker 1: can trigger a landslide or a mass movement. Um and
15:30
Speaker 1: and really if you think about it all, a mass
15:32
Speaker 1: movement is like a landslide. It's just erosion in at
15:36
Speaker 1: high speed. Sudden and high speed erosion is is basically
15:39
Speaker 1: what that is. Rather than taking millions of years to
15:43
Speaker 1: move from here to there through wind or waves or whatever,
15:46
Speaker 1: it's just happens in a moment, and it happens on mass.
16:03
Speaker 1: That's sky should all right. So we mentioned triggers, Uh,
16:16
Speaker 1: the landside always has to have a trigger, that has
16:18
Speaker 1: to be something to actually set it off, even though
16:22
Speaker 1: it maybe years and years in the making. Something finally
16:25
Speaker 1: pushes that button to make it happen. Um. It forces
16:29
Speaker 1: gravity to overcome friction, that's right. One of the things
16:34
Speaker 1: that we mentioned already in the case of Washington was water,
16:38
Speaker 1: and that is probably the most common heavy rainfall I
16:42
Speaker 1: know in California and Los Angeles. When you see houses
16:45
Speaker 1: slipping off the hill in Malibu because they don't get
16:48
Speaker 1: a lot of rain and when they do, things like
16:49
Speaker 1: that happen. Yeah, And it's either water saturating the ground
16:53
Speaker 1: and just making it so heavy that it flows downward,
16:56
Speaker 1: or it gets down in between the soil and the
17:00
Speaker 1: rock and just causes the whole thing to undermines everything
17:04
Speaker 1: either way. Water equals a lot of movement. Earthquakes that
17:08
Speaker 1: can definitely trigger a landslide. Um. We've covered earthquakes. You
17:12
Speaker 1: should go listen to that show if you have, and
17:14
Speaker 1: it's a good one. But you've got the vibrating of
17:16
Speaker 1: the Earth's crust and that UM is going to disrupt
17:19
Speaker 1: that friction pretty easily. Another big one is wildfires, which
17:23
Speaker 1: you would think, well, how would a wildfire trigger that.
17:25
Speaker 1: I'll tell you how UM. Vegetation, the roots of vegetation
17:30
Speaker 1: can lock soil into basically a totally solid, cemented state,
17:36
Speaker 1: and as long as you have thick vegetation on a slope,
17:39
Speaker 1: it's gonna be fairly stable. When a fire comes through
17:42
Speaker 1: burns out all the vegetation, it often burns the roots
17:44
Speaker 1: as well, leaving not only less stable soil, but actual
17:49
Speaker 1: pockets in that soil too, So now it's kind of pebbled,
17:52
Speaker 1: which makes it a lot more vulnerable the landslides after
17:55
Speaker 1: a wildfire. Yeah, I would I'm just guessing here, but
17:58
Speaker 1: I would guess a landslide could happen like even long
18:02
Speaker 1: after wildfire, Like if those roots die away, it would
18:05
Speaker 1: just become even less stable. Uh, and then volcanoes. Uh,
18:09
Speaker 1: volcanic action is a big cause. And there are a
18:12
Speaker 1: couple of um different kinds of flows that can contribute
18:17
Speaker 1: to a landslide from a volcano. When it's called a
18:20
Speaker 1: pyroclastic flow, and that is after your dome has collapsed
18:25
Speaker 1: or during interruption. And these are super high speed. They've
18:29
Speaker 1: clocked him at four hundred and fifty miles ad degrees fahrenheit. Yeah,
18:34
Speaker 1: lava flowing at you at four I can't even imagine that,
18:38
Speaker 1: like cage, like seven hundred and twenty four kilometers per hour,
18:44
Speaker 1: that's easier. Well, there you go. Then you just imagine four. Yeah,
18:48
Speaker 1: but I mean I don't even know what that looks like,
18:50
Speaker 1: you know, or death, yeah, exactly. Uh. And then they
18:55
Speaker 1: are something called a lahar, which is an Indonesian word.
18:59
Speaker 1: And this isn't uh it doesn't have to be during interruption,
19:02
Speaker 1: but it can be. And it is set off by
19:05
Speaker 1: water as well. Um, it's almost always near something called
19:09
Speaker 1: a stratovolcano, which are like super steep cones, and a
19:13
Speaker 1: lot of times there's either a crater lake or it's
19:15
Speaker 1: snow capped up top, and so that's the water agent.
19:19
Speaker 1: A lot of times. It's the snow and it it
19:21
Speaker 1: sort of looks like wet concrete flowing downhill. Yeah, and
19:24
Speaker 1: it may or may not be set off during an
19:27
Speaker 1: actual volcanic eruption. It can happen anytime. Yeah, and it's
19:30
Speaker 1: it's much slower, you know, an hour, but still if
19:34
Speaker 1: you're in a golf cart, you're dead. Yeah, that's a
19:37
Speaker 1: good point. Uh And while it's not fast, it has
19:40
Speaker 1: um a lot more rock. So it is one of
19:44
Speaker 1: the deadliest a lahar is I think because of just
19:47
Speaker 1: the shoot, like you can carry like a big boulder, Yes,
19:50
Speaker 1: in the middle of that wet concrete, plus of volcano also. Um,
19:55
Speaker 1: it's just it's not very stable because the composition of
19:59
Speaker 1: it is usually pretty loose rocky soil. Uh So Yeah,
20:02
Speaker 1: if you had water, it immediately turns the slurry um
20:05
Speaker 1: and when they erupt, they tend to shake the ground
20:08
Speaker 1: a little bit, which is what happened in the largest
20:12
Speaker 1: recorded landslide in Mount St. Helen's. Everybody knows the eruption,
20:19
Speaker 1: but there was actually an attendant landslide that's on YouTube
20:23
Speaker 1: you can check out. As a matter of fact, Um,
20:25
Speaker 1: we're putting a post up of just amazing landslide footage
20:29
Speaker 1: that you can check out on our website. UM, just
20:32
Speaker 1: go to stuff you Should Know dot com and check
20:34
Speaker 1: out that post. There's just a just some crazy stuff
20:37
Speaker 1: that people just happened to be filming and all of
20:40
Speaker 1: a sudden, the earth changes right before your eyes. And
20:45
Speaker 1: one of them is this Mount St. Helen's eruption, where
20:47
Speaker 1: just the whole mountain is basically just melting in front
20:51
Speaker 1: of you. I remember that one, do you know? Yeah,
20:54
Speaker 1: that was only four I was nine, so it was
20:57
Speaker 1: on my radio. Yeah. Uh, that one traveled at speeds
21:00
Speaker 1: of a hundred and fifty miles and again Washington State,
21:05
Speaker 1: not getting a break, destroyed twenty seven bridges, about two
21:08
Speaker 1: hundred homes, miles and miles of road, and covered three
21:13
Speaker 1: square miles with debris. Yeah, that was a Mount St. Helens. Well,
21:18
Speaker 1: you know, it's just the landslide. Another another frequent hazard
21:21
Speaker 1: associated with landslides is you think about it, um, when
21:25
Speaker 1: all of this earth is coming down, it's coming downward
21:28
Speaker 1: into a lower space, which is very frequently a valley,
21:31
Speaker 1: which is very frequently a river valley, which means that
21:35
Speaker 1: the river is dam now, so it's flooding behind it,
21:38
Speaker 1: right so you have a flood a flood hazard immediately,
21:42
Speaker 1: and then if that river or if that damn breaks,
21:46
Speaker 1: then you have another flood hazard down river all of
21:48
Speaker 1: a sudden too, which is something that's going on in
21:51
Speaker 1: Washington right now. Yeah, the same thing happened in Um.
21:55
Speaker 1: I think it's the most expensive landslide in US history.
21:58
Speaker 1: In thistle Utah uh in N, the same thing happened there.
22:03
Speaker 1: It damned up the Spanish Fork River and caused like
22:07
Speaker 1: much more problems just because of the flooding. And that
22:11
Speaker 1: was two hundred million dollar fix in four dollars, and
22:16
Speaker 1: that was even when Reagan was in office. So it's
22:18
Speaker 1: not too much different from the two thousand uh. The
22:22
Speaker 1: submarine landslide we should probably talk about that is in
22:25
Speaker 1: the ocean, and that is you can you can have
22:30
Speaker 1: an earthquake under the ocean triggering a landslide underwater, which
22:35
Speaker 1: will trigger a tsunami. Yeah, I can a one to
22:39
Speaker 1: three punch basically of natural disasters happening all in concert.
22:44
Speaker 1: Um that and then actually I don't know if this
22:46
Speaker 1: really technically counts, but it's seeing that um little bit
22:51
Speaker 1: triggered a memory of the Lake Penur disaster in Louisiana
22:57
Speaker 1: in night, Texico is drilling in Lake Penyr and apparently
23:02
Speaker 1: they didn't consult the map closely enough, and they were
23:04
Speaker 1: using a fourteen inch diameter drill and they drilled into
23:09
Speaker 1: the lake bottom which was on top of a salt mine,
23:13
Speaker 1: and they drilled into an operational salt mine, and the
23:17
Speaker 1: lake got sucked into the hole in the giant whirlpool.
23:22
Speaker 1: UM that took about like thirty to fifty of the
23:25
Speaker 1: surrounding acreage around the lake in into the lake with it.
23:29
Speaker 1: Eleven barges were sucked in the um flow of water
23:34
Speaker 1: reverse so it went from freshwater to salt water. It
23:36
Speaker 1: sucked the gulf into it for a second, and then
23:40
Speaker 1: a couple of days later after they were like four
23:42
Speaker 1: hundred foot geysers as like these shafts were filling with
23:45
Speaker 1: water and the air was being displaced and um, a
23:49
Speaker 1: couple of days later, after the water pressure stabilized, like
23:52
Speaker 1: nine of the barges popped back up and like went
23:54
Speaker 1: back to floating after being sucked down into this diamond mine.
23:57
Speaker 1: It's crazy and then nuts and apparently they're a aotage
24:00
Speaker 1: of it. It's it's awesome. It's like just The most
24:04
Speaker 1: amazing thing, I guess more amazing than that is no
24:06
Speaker 1: one died. Wow. Yeah, there was one guy on the
24:09
Speaker 1: lake who was operating the drill. He got all and
24:13
Speaker 1: then there was a guy fishing on the lake and
24:14
Speaker 1: he zoomed his boat to shore and made it like
24:17
Speaker 1: wild when far enough that he made it. But I
24:19
Speaker 1: think three dogs died a lake pen your p E
24:24
Speaker 1: I G N E U R disaster check it out.
24:27
Speaker 1: I was all excited and then the um man, that's crazy.
24:33
Speaker 1: There had to be some sort of erosion going on there,
24:35
Speaker 1: and technically it was submarine erosion. Um. The most deadly
24:40
Speaker 1: landslide in the history of the world is was a
24:44
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty in China, December of nineteen twenty. It was
24:48
Speaker 1: triggered by an earthquake and as many as two hundred
24:53
Speaker 1: thousand people died in that one, and some of that
24:55
Speaker 1: was from the earthquake, but they said the landslide was
24:57
Speaker 1: responsible for most of the deaths. Yeah. Like I said,
25:00
Speaker 1: in the US, it's like twenty to thirty five deaths
25:03
Speaker 1: a year. Worldwide, it's more like four thousand, and then
25:06
Speaker 1: on on years where there's terrible earthquakes, it will go
25:10
Speaker 1: up into the tens of thousands. Um. And then there
25:13
Speaker 1: was there was a MUDs like for there was a
25:15
Speaker 1: mud slide in in Vargus, state of Venezuela that killed
25:20
Speaker 1: like thirty thousand people. It just covered a bunch of
25:23
Speaker 1: towns like all at once. It was a mud slide
25:25
Speaker 1: or mud flow. I guess. Well. One thing I thought
25:29
Speaker 1: was interesting was that UM and I think Jennifer points
25:31
Speaker 1: us out early in the article that while in the
25:34
Speaker 1: States we don't see a lot of UH deaths from
25:36
Speaker 1: landslides each year, they're the most expensive natural disaster over
25:42
Speaker 1: I think tornadoes, earthquakes combined in this country. And if
25:47
Speaker 1: you will consult your homeowners insurance, you will almost definitely
25:51
Speaker 1: find that the landslides are not covered. Yeah. Noope, that's
26:11
Speaker 1: sky should know. Well, I guess we should get to
26:21
Speaker 1: that point then that or is it us? Is it
26:24
Speaker 1: humans that are causing these things? Yes? Always, not always. No.
26:30
Speaker 1: Animals can cause it, like a goat can cause a
26:33
Speaker 1: landslide if it really is unsure footed. But goats don't
26:38
Speaker 1: blast mountain tops with dynamite that's wine. Yeah, they don't DeForest. Yeah,
26:44
Speaker 1: Defourestation is a big problem road building and through the mountains. Yeah,
26:47
Speaker 1: because think about it, when you have a mountain and
26:50
Speaker 1: you cut a road through it, all of a sudden,
26:52
Speaker 1: what was once a relatively gentle slope are now too
26:55
Speaker 1: steep slopes on either side just aiming right at the road. Well, yeah,
26:59
Speaker 1: and I think everyone it's probably driven on mountain roads
27:01
Speaker 1: where they either have uh, chain link fencing on the
27:05
Speaker 1: side of it, which is scary enough, or I guess
27:08
Speaker 1: it's even scarier when they don't have fencing, but they
27:10
Speaker 1: have signs that say, you know, watch out for falling
27:13
Speaker 1: rocks or good luck pal. Yeah. Um. There are things
27:18
Speaker 1: that people are doing though. When they do build roads,
27:21
Speaker 1: they sometimes we'll put in drainage pipes to carry away water,
27:25
Speaker 1: which helps h in permeable membranes like plastic sheeting. Yeah,
27:31
Speaker 1: so it can't trickle down. Yeah, retaining walls and reforestation.
27:37
Speaker 1: So if you're gonna clear cut an area, if you're
27:39
Speaker 1: gonna harvest timber, maybe go back in there and try
27:42
Speaker 1: and reforest plant something. Yeah, you know, numbersture. I can't
27:49
Speaker 1: believe that that's not a law that if you take
27:53
Speaker 1: X number of trees down, you have to plant x
27:55
Speaker 1: number of trees and the number you plant should be
27:57
Speaker 1: more than the number you took. Is that not a law?
28:00
Speaker 1: I'm I'm quite sure it's not. We can't even get
28:03
Speaker 1: black box recorders ejected for an extra like fifty bucks
28:07
Speaker 1: a plane. Remember, I remember, there's no law for that. Hey.
28:11
Speaker 1: But here in Georgia, we just passed the law where
28:13
Speaker 1: you can bring guns into churches and uh bars, oh,
28:17
Speaker 1: I thought you were gonna say that. I'm actually rejoicing
28:20
Speaker 1: for another law. I don't know if it was signed
28:23
Speaker 1: in the law or if the House passed it and
28:24
Speaker 1: it's on its way. It is now a crime to
28:28
Speaker 1: drive slow in the fast lane, or it will soon
28:33
Speaker 1: be when they passed this law. Give me some parameters,
28:35
Speaker 1: do you know? Called the slow poke bill? Okay, And
28:38
Speaker 1: if you are impeding the flow of traffic, not even
28:41
Speaker 1: if you're going under fifty five or under forty five.
28:45
Speaker 1: They're so aware that Georgia drives fast that they say,
28:48
Speaker 1: if you're impeding the flow of traffic, even if other
28:51
Speaker 1: people are breaking the law and you're going the speed limit,
28:54
Speaker 1: you are breaking the law by being a slow poke
28:56
Speaker 1: in the fast lane, which is the most glorious law
28:59
Speaker 1: any any city or state has ever come up with. Well,
29:03
Speaker 1: if he states right, if you go to Europe, the
29:06
Speaker 1: left lane is just for passing, Like, you shouldn't even
29:08
Speaker 1: be traveling in the left lane. Right, it's supposed to
29:11
Speaker 1: be you go around someone and then you stay out
29:14
Speaker 1: of it. It's supposed to be that way here too. Boy,
29:17
Speaker 1: it ain't. No. But if you've got the chops, you
29:19
Speaker 1: can travel in the fast lane, as long as you're
29:21
Speaker 1: not holding people up, the ones that are really like
29:24
Speaker 1: you need to go to jail, or ones that are
29:26
Speaker 1: just knowingly or like, I'm driving the speed limit so right,
29:30
Speaker 1: you don't own the road. It's like, well, there's ten
29:33
Speaker 1: people behind you that you're holding up, So you're the
29:36
Speaker 1: one who goes to jail. Now in Georgia, that's gonna
29:38
Speaker 1: be tough to enforce. It's totally subjective to I mean,
29:43
Speaker 1: it's like a cop can. It's totally up to the
29:45
Speaker 1: cop to enforce or not. But yeah, it's still I
29:48
Speaker 1: just think it's a it's a grand gesture, agreed, slow folkes. Okay, So,
29:54
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about landslides, you can
29:58
Speaker 1: type that word into the search bar how stuff works
30:00
Speaker 1: dot com. You should also check out geology dot com.
30:03
Speaker 1: They have a really great UM page with lots of
30:05
Speaker 1: different sub pages on landslides. Yeah, and if you're in
30:09
Speaker 1: that area and have been impacted, we would love to
30:11
Speaker 1: hear from you for sure, and we're thinking about you
30:13
Speaker 1: guys obviously. UM I think did we say search bar
30:17
Speaker 1: at any point? Yes, Well, then that means it's time
30:20
Speaker 1: for listener mail. All right, I'm gonna call this UM.
30:25
Speaker 1: Possibly the unit bomber is writing us. Hey, guys, I
30:28
Speaker 1: want to send out a note from the Great North.
30:31
Speaker 1: I've been listening since my buddy Adam played me the
30:33
Speaker 1: Lego podcast a few years ago, and since then I've
30:36
Speaker 1: been a fairly regular listener, but never more so than
30:39
Speaker 1: over the past few months because last spring I moved
30:41
Speaker 1: from Minneapolis to Juneau, Alaska for job gardening at a
30:45
Speaker 1: public uh arboretum. It sounds like a lovely job. By
30:48
Speaker 1: the way, well, I live in a little shack in
30:51
Speaker 1: the woods near my work, about twenty five miles out
30:53
Speaker 1: of town, about a half a mile from my nearest neighbor,
30:56
Speaker 1: almost free of rent. Close proximity to work, and uniqueness
31:00
Speaker 1: of the situation is what drew me to it. I
31:03
Speaker 1: have no internet, I have no cell phone service, so um.
31:06
Speaker 1: Every time I head into town, I stopped by the
31:08
Speaker 1: library or a coffee shop and download more of your podcasts. Uh,
31:12
Speaker 1: new stuff and oldies, but goodies that are still new
31:14
Speaker 1: to me. I have gotten into the habit of listening
31:17
Speaker 1: to you guys most evenings while making or eating dinner.
31:20
Speaker 1: I know some people in our town, but in the
31:23
Speaker 1: interest of using less gasoline and sparing my more or
31:25
Speaker 1: less meager bank account, I spend the majority of my
31:28
Speaker 1: nights out here alone. Whenever I do go into town, UM,
31:33
Speaker 1: or one of my friends makes their way out here,
31:35
Speaker 1: I tell them about whatever I've learned from you guys.
31:37
Speaker 1: Listening to you banter and learning a lot of interesting
31:40
Speaker 1: new things has definitely helped me keep my firm grip
31:42
Speaker 1: on my sanity. Uh. Winter is basically wrapping up here.
31:46
Speaker 1: It was long and harsh. We had ninety six inches
31:49
Speaker 1: of snow in December alone. Well, I'm really looking forward
31:57
Speaker 1: to springing summer when Alaska comes to life with tour
32:00
Speaker 1: seasonal workers in long, sunny days. But I'll still find
32:03
Speaker 1: time to listen to your good stuff, so keep it rolling.
32:06
Speaker 1: I am happy I decided to live out here this
32:08
Speaker 1: past winter. It's a beautiful spot and a good adventure,
32:10
Speaker 1: but would have been a lot more difficult without the
32:13
Speaker 1: company of you guys. You rule. And that is from
32:17
Speaker 1: Will and Will. That sounds like my kind of life, Buddy,
32:20
Speaker 1: I'd love to do that. That is your Union bomb risk.
32:23
Speaker 1: I could sands the bombing. I could be the UNI bomber. Well,
32:27
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're enjoying yourself. Will thank you for letting
32:30
Speaker 1: us know that we're helping you out out there. Um,
32:33
Speaker 1: if you want to let us know that we're helping
32:36
Speaker 1: you out whether you live alone or are part of
32:38
Speaker 1: a Brady bunch or something like that, you can tweak
32:41
Speaker 1: to us at s y s K podcast. You can
32:44
Speaker 1: send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff
32:46
Speaker 1: Works dot com, and as always, hang out with us
32:48
Speaker 1: at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know
32:50
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
32:55
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit
32:59
Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
33:01
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.