Mudslide bigger than usual: Expert
Posted Jul 2, 2011 9:15 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The mudslide that shut down Highway One a few days ago came as no surprise to one local expert. But while these kinds of slides are quite common but this most recent one was much bigger than normal.
SFU Earth Sciences Professor, Brent Ward, tells News1130 this is an unusual time of year for landslides. “Usually we get these debris flows associated with our fall and winter storms. So usually we stuff like this happening in November, December, January.”
“I think the reason we have a debris flow happening now is because we’ve had such a cool, wet spring. So things are wet to begin with and we likely had snow up where the debris flow initiated, then that rain melted some of the snow and there was even more water on the slopes.”
He says slides are nearly impossible to predict, but crews can build debris-flow retention structures. “They actually have constructed some along there. I’ve noticed as I’ve been driving that they have built some debris flow retention structures on some of the structures.”
Ward happens to be in Italy right now, researching rockslides with a group of colleagues and students.
