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How Landslides Work · Stuff You Should Know

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