There are often very large areas at some risk and it may not be practical to avoid them. The key is to find the home or lot with the least amount of potential hazard.
Thank you very much. I’ve learned something new today. Your style of teaching appeals very much to me, so much that I’m eager to keep on learning and listening. Keeping focused is never an issue on your channel, said the 47 yr electronic engineer (bsc) 😂 #keeponlearning
Imagine if we had lifespans of one or two billion years! We would see the surface of the Earth is being fluidic. Stability would probably not be a word in our lexicon.
County and municipalities should hire geologists to assess the stability of slopes in areas where homes are to be built before approving a development permit.
I was thinking exactly the same thing. The topic is interesting to me but the instruction is the reason I stayed for the entire video. Not everybody can be an instructor.
Yes, this was very clearly explained, and easy to absorb. Lots of information and knowledge here I've never given much thought too before seeing this video.
THANK YOU! Using drone footage and Google earth images to give a context to what a person walking on the ground is *very* useful. It was a very neat way to get a visual idea of history. This goes to show that those who don’t study history are prone to repeating past events.
I never would've thought I'd be so interested in watching geology videos but there's just something so magnetic about an expert talking passionately about the field they love. It really draws you in. Thank you, Myron.
This is one of the subjects presented in school that should be absolutely fascinating, and the presenter manages to beat that last vestiges of interesrt out of the subject matter.
Absolutely have the same reaction here. I look at stones and rocks and feel they are able to tell a story if I could understand the language. Myron helps me learn it.
I was looking at a model townhome in Sedona Az. Up against a magnificent, red, shear cliff. Walked out onto the back patio and looked up. I saw a boulder about the size of a 2 car garage nearly straight up. "Who in the world,..." I thought as I quickly left the death trap.
The Turtle Mountain landslide in southwestern Alberta is particularly impressive. A jumble of house size boulders extending kilometers from the mountainside that collapsed, extending through the town. They found an infant crying atop one of the boulders; amazing that anyone in the path survived.
In the "they shouldda knowed" department: this landslide was not natural; it was caused by badly engineered coal mines in the mountain. So easy to dig straight into the mountain at the base!
i presume this would be visible on Google Earth. i will take a look at it after the video is finished. i never heard of this incident and hope that everyone that could be saved, was.
Search Google Earth for Turtle Mountain, the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre appear on the edge of the slide. The boundary of the slide shows how massive it was.
The infant story is an urban legend. Think about massive boulders from an entire half of a crumbling mountain and any set of circumstances where a baby gets tossed from a house and lands safely on top of one.
Hi Myron! My house was built on a hill in 1950 (fairly lax building codes at that time) so I have long been concerned about seismic liquifaction of the earth mound under my foundation. One thing I have going in my favor is a colony of Locust trees with theie spreading roots. I have encouraged the Locust tree roots to form a basket around my dirt mound and I hope that will help hold it all together in the (admitedly unlikely) event of a seismic episode strong enough to cause concern (since I live outside of Baltimore, not known to be particularly siesmically active). I appreciate this video because I take this very seriously. I must say, you did some great demonstrations to aid in visualizing the hydraulic pressures involved in driving landslides. Wow, the scale of those very large landslide complexes makes me feel very tiny in comparison.
Sadly the La Conchita slide law suits awarded the victims with tons of money and financially ruined the guy with the avocado farm at the top of the cliff even though expert witnesses said his irrigation had nothing to do with the land slide. It had rained 40 inches that year, nearly three times the yearly average but they had the nerve to blame the farmer. The county also got off scott free even though they allowed people to build homes in a well known hazard site and did not inform those owners of the risks. So the one guy who had absolutely nothing to do with the idiocy of living in La Conchita paid with his entire livelihood and property was taken from him. It was one of the greatest miscarriages of justice I've ever seen.
Very nicely done. I'm recalling landslides both historically and recently in southcentral Alaska. Of course the Lituya Bay event was enormous, but there were so few people there it was not som harmful. The 1964 quake, magnitude 9.2 coerced many potential locations to slide, both above ground and below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. In November of 2022, a landslide in Haines killed a couple of folks as their homes were washed into the sea. Thanks for the great perspectives!
Myron my dude, your voice and way you calmy and clearly present your topics is fantastic. Many notes should be taken by other channels on how to communicate with their audience. Thank you!
I just love the time every few weeks we get to spend online watching your videos and learning. This was one of the few that wasn't hard for me, since here on Hawai'i Island it's very easy to see the scarping and slumps from old landslides. So when you were showing the views from your drone i was easily picking out the features of the slides.
Thanks for sharing such fascinating geology! I've taken a particular interest in landslides and have been mapping out landslide events that make headline news or posted via social media. By mapping out these events, its hard not to see that, more times than not, landslides happen along certain geological formations, which I still need to gather more notes to say for sure. I never tire keeping record and studying the geology of landslide regions ... there's always something new to learn. Your presentation gave me a greater understanding of the dynamic process of landslides! Another ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ geology lesson!
What a helpful video you have made and shared with us. We can now see the bigger picture and know where unscrupulous developers are pushing their luck with new housing.
I’ve long wondered how developers get away with building houses and developments in ecologically dicey areas. They should be required to get a geological threat assessment that’s made available to the public before getting a license to build and should be held responsible if they chose to build in a bad area and people die. People do such selfish and reckless things putting others at risk in the pursuit of profit.
I live near Oso, I remember vividly driving through the slide the day they cleared the road. The scary thing that few talk about is what's heavily suspected to have influenced the slide is how the hillside was logged back in the old days. Because of how they logged and terraformed the hill it created an unnatural funnel for rainwater down the slope, eroding and weakening the soil and causing it to be deeply unstable. And worse than that, their methods were apparently no uncommon throughout the whole PNW - which means there's certainly more to come in the future.
I just thought I would paste a comment in this same video: "I remember driving through the landslide in Oso, WA right after it happened (after the hwy was reopened of course) it was devastating . I spoke with a couple Sauk-Suiattle natives and they said their grandmothers called it "The Walking Valley" and knew not to build in that specific area."
Myron, you keep knocking them out of the park! This was another fantastic video and I deeply appreciate you doing these. Once you learn how to spot things like scarps, moraines, clusters of lakes, and fossilized sand dunes you can never unsee them. You start to see and appreciate the history embedded in the landscape that has been staring you right in the face the whole time. It is magical and deepens a person's appreciation of time and space.
I really Like Your style. Always so informative without sounding like you're talking down. It's like we're going on the learning adventure. This video in particular really got me thinking.
Thanks for another well done lesson in geology. I was living in Santa Barbara near La Cochita during the time of both slides. They were both heavy rain years. 1995 had two 500-year rain events, 10 Jan & 10 March. The 2005 rain came down more or less steadily over a week or 10 days. The soils were just clay muddy, very slide prone. Many slumps are visible along that stretch of Hwy 101. After the 1st slide a retaining wall of big steel I-Beam piles with timbers secured by the I-beam channels had been put in place along the warning signs about the slide dangers. People stayed anyway and even moved ther due to cheap property values. Leading up to the 2005 slide water pressure at the base of the slide was causing water to spray out between timbers. Many people left, but several stayed with the deadly consequences. Ironically, an avocado rancher at the top of the plateau was sued, accused of “overwatering”. The rancher lost - crazy Cali!🤦🏻
If they had two 500-year rain events in the same year, that tells us they don't actually know what the 500-year rain event is, and their current estimates are way off.
Avocados are a thirsty crop, but I dont put it past Americans to put overly litigous. They need 70 liters for a single avocado, there other water intensive crops that we love like almonds and oranges but damn that shit is insane. Maybe the farm shouldnt have been so upstream so to speak.
It was winter, nobody irrigates their orchards at that time of year. Compared to the amount of rain received, it would be nearly impossible to irrigate an equivalent amount of water, let alone pay for it.
@@scottyallen7237 Good context, I meant to comeback and add to my previous comment that also maybe folks shouldnt have set up downslope of a historically dangerous area.
There was a lot of debate if Ventura County should forcibly evict people from living there in La Conchita. There may have been warnings posted. People who lived there were aware of the risk, but may have rationalized false comfort from the temporary barrier installed in an attempt to stabilize the slope. People are still living there today.
Your an amazing geologist and professor. Thank you for bringing this information to the world in a profound explanation tion. Your drone footage is outstanding, and very high quality. I don't think you would be able to produce a higher quality educational video. Nice work! Looking forward to the next one Myron.
I remember driving through the landslide in Oso, WA right after it happened (after the hwy was reopened of course) it was devastating . I spoke with a couple Sauk-Suiattle natives and they said their grandmothers called it "The Walking Valley" and knew not to build in that specific area.
Thank you Myron Cook - this is the second time I have watched this very informative video. Your "teaching style" makes is pretty easy for anyone to learn and recognize landslide areas. There were a number of landslide or slumping residential areas in San Diego that got quite a lot of publicity a number of years back.
These landslides with their bulging hills & lake formation, might be the answer for the Green, un-conformity boundary layer that is found in New Mexico, & elsewhere right? Thanks Myron, our Geology Guru!
Its always a great day when Myron Cook gives us another fantastic video! I had to go to the bank today and they had a print on the wall and it was fun to try and work a geologists eye on it. I counted 20+ layers in a portion of it, I just wish I knew where the photo was taken so I could learn more about. When you talked about landslide scars I hope Im not too presumptious in my own understanding to say that you were cleverly standing right on top of some! I absolutely love the way you structure these lectures, I know Id be just as engaged in a classroom setting with such perfectly curated visual aides. Now I know why they always called them escarpments on Time Team, cause it was typically the result of erosion and/or landslides that made the steep surfaces theyd be rappeling and carefully digging in. As you got to the pip demonstration I was reminded of glimpses of some hard bedrock exposed in a couple of your shots and it immediately stood at as a red flag. Relatively thin soil with an immberable is a recipe for disaster OOH MY GOD THE MASSIVE SCARPE AT 37:05. It boggles the mind to imagine what seeing that wouldve been like. And then seeing the chain of stones indicating shoulders thatve been really weathered in the next one, mega yikes.
The view at the 3:15 mark is quite striking. I see evidence on the right side of the stream of an older bajada, or linked series of alluvial fans, a depositional feature, that is now being actively eroded by the stream. In addition to down-cutting it appears that there is a significant landslide hazard on the “hummock-y” slope between the fans and the stream bank, and that the margin of the old alluvial fan is actually a scarp created by extensive areas of the old fan slumping into the drainage. Edit: Ooof. Myron zooms in with the drone on exactly that scene at the 27:00 minute mark. At the 33:00 minute mark at the Oso, WA slide, one of the common features of all 4 slides seems to be that they occurred at the OUTSIDES of meander bends where erosion is progressing the fastest and “over-steepening” the slopes above the outsides of the meander bends faster than other parts of the drainage. The Oso debris flow pushed the stream across the valley and now the OPPOSITE side of the river will be the outside of the meander bend, making that the more likely location for a future slide.
So glad you mentioned Grand Mesa. Had the opportunity to do some soil and lake sediment coring there while working on my undergrad and those slump and rotational blocks created the ideal conditions to get data that can help us reconstruct passed climatic conductions (up until the last glacial maximum). Such a beautiful place and great video!
I just happened to watch this video a week ago. Then I witnessed the very thing Mr.Cook was discussing. The tropical storm Hilary hit California this past week and multiple landslides occurred. A sad thing for the people who live there. If only they had this knowledge before looking for a home to buy. Thank you for all your efforts and sharing your knowledge with us.
I am in no way a geologist, and I watch these videos out of curiosity. Who would have thought that I'll get something that practical and useful! Thank you so much!
My father was a geologist. I wish I spent more time listening to him. He started working in in the 1930s in what is now Zambia (Northern Rhodesia then). He was looking for minerals but had to look out for lions and crocodiles and hippos. He had to hunt for meat. He became an excellent shot. Some incredible stories from that time. If anyone is interested, I could expand.
Wow, wow -- brilliant video, important video. This could save enormous money and more importantly many lives. Where I live in the SLC area of Utah large numbers of people live on the slopes of the mountains in areas called ... benches. Late spring of this year, thanks to the heavy rains and snowfall we received over the winter, there were a number of homes destroyed through a combination of flash flooding and minor landslides. Thankfully no one was killed, but a number of very expensive homes were destroyed or made uninhabitable. I've learned a lot about geology and the world around me thinks to guys like you and Shawn Willsey. The use of modern tools like Google Earth and drones provide a perspective that must be changing geology as we speak...
If you're building a structure on any of these locations . . . probably just pitch a tent. Thanks Myron for another awesome video. I learned a lot. The way springs pop out of hillsides was a big one for me. Cheers
Once again I find that 38 minutes and 47 seconds doesn't reach the end of my attention span when the subject matter and teacher are so well synched with each other. Thank you, Myron.
Just WOW! Super interesting and super well told! I've seen only two videos on the channel, and I find it one of the most interesting channels! Thank you, Sir, for doing a fantastic job in telling about geology!
FYI. The July 12 landslide landslide atop the Palos Verdes Peninsula may have been caused by a broken water pipes under one of the homes that was lost to the slide. Prior to the slide, the neighbor got a water bill over $1000. It must have been broken for several months.
WOW! I knew some of this. Now I know so much more. My dad in the mid 1960s vetoed several locations of land mom wanted for a weekend cabin site. He said no because of snow avalanche and/or landslide danger. He was an old school woodsman. We would drive through Oso long before people lived there. Dad was always nervous because he said it had an old history of slides. Then in college I was thinking of a geography major when a large slump type slide occurred along the Yakima River in Kittitas County WA. The professor spent a lecture about that slide, what slump slides are, and how they are very common in Eastern Washington. Now that I've been watching you and a couple of other geologists I see details in land better than three years ago. I had begun to recognize alluvial fans better. Yet this video has really furthered my vision greatly. At the beginning I missed some of the danger until you pointed them out. This video needs to be required training for city planner and developers when getting their licenses, especially in the western US. Thank you.
Hammocky and slumping areas were forever planted in my vision after a physical geology course. As a Wyomingite, the wonders of geology is etched in my bones. Never build where trees and posts lean. Developers want to make money, land buyers must be smarter. Nice videos!
This brought back many childhood memories. I was born and raised on the East Coast of the North Island of NZ. Once the forest cover was removed to create stock farms the soft mud stone under the small layer of topsoil became very susceptible to extreme slipping. I have seen an area where water pressure blew a block of land, the size of a couple of acres off the hill side. The slide seemed to jump of the hill then slide to the bottom. by thge end of the rain event over 80% of the hill side grass was gone, either in the slide or was ripped out as the slide wnt down the hill. Gotta love mudstone dissolving when wet!!!
Thank you Byron for providing knowledge that will be a great advantage looking for property to build or buy a home. In the 1980's while in the LA area attending a geology symposium we took a field trip to a new subdivision being developed located on a hillside over the San Andreas Fault with obvious slump blocks. The joke was they were building soon to be split level homes! Although it was no joke. Obvious the danger of of slumping hill sides was being overlooked. If I recall correctly the development was "red tagged" and halted due to the potential danger.
24:20 these graphics really helped me better visualize/understand what you were demonstrating. i thank you very much for this. for me, it did wonders to clarify your message.
Land For Sale? Great view of the ocean. Light rolling hills between mountains. No need to consult any experts here. It will be fine. Thirty years later after many heavy rains, earthquakes, floods, etc. and all of a sudden it is not. Great eye opening video professor. Glad I live in the Midwest or I would be calling you!
I'll never look at South Fork the same way again. I've seen plenty of spots where slumps had obviously occurred but I just haven't looked at it on the scale you've shown us. It's incredible to think of and once again... learning has occurred. Your videos are always educational and thoroughly enjoyable my friend.
That was excellent! I live in the Limousin area of France, just outside an old village, in a house that began to be built about 150 years ago, on a pile of rocks, but without the kind of foundation that would be normal today. I‘m satisfied that it will be here for another 150 years, but the house is surrounded by underground streams. Your video has helped me to understand more about the geology underneath my feet. Thank you so much for your very clear, and very timely, explanation!
I learned about ancient landslides while reading about the St. Francis dam failure near Los Angeles CA. The designers back then probably had no idea that they were building on one, potentially leading to its failure. Once I learned to see the clues, I started seeing them on most hillsides.
A perfect example of bad planning or surveying is the 2018 Rattlesnake Hills landslide just south of Union Gap, WA. A materials company was working on a hillside, basically parallel tp I-82. About 20 acres of the hill started to go downhill toward the highway. They lined up a few railroad train Box Cars filled with concrete, and lined them alone the bottom of the hill. It was pretty interesting how they were following how fast it was moving. The mining company closed and the Dept. of land management installed sensors. Thorp Rd. and I-82 were in danger.
The various land topology shown reminds me of the area of Turkey where all the ancient settlements now being rediscovered were/are. You can tell that land that seemed solid was capable of shifting; indicating a reason for the various building stages and structure burials.
This is so interesting! I'm a retired civil engineer and we studied landslides of this type. You would look at a circular cross section, the length of the shear line, and the weight and centroid of the soil volume to calculate the most probable slide cross section. I wish we could have watched this video back in 1976! I was fascinated by the landslide in Spanish Fork Canyon near the town of Thistle. It would be interesting if you could talk about the Thistle landslide.
As a delegate from the Miami Florida Airport Landslide Authority, I must say I enjoyed your presentation very much. We need your your help with a problem that our resident astrologer predicted could occur as a result of landslides in our area. (planetary alignments and that sort of thing) We have plenty of government money to fund your project. Sincerely, Harvey Gruntsplatter MFALA
The landslide in the thumbnail of your video, Oso, is where my cousin lost the majority of his moms side of the family. Three generations buried in an instant. It's sad to see that the tragedy was known to have been inevitable from at least 1999, and nothing was done. There are still houses being built in the area that are known to have similar risk.
This is a great piece. I've been a geologist for several decades now. This is a well put together presentation. It has a good tone and pace for education. It could be the standard for all folks that evaluate and approve building plans and civil works. Nature always wins so it's best we not get in the way. Great presentation.
You just described exactly where I live... I've been up my mountain and seen the seeps ... not to mention the table top monster rocks 10 feet from my house... that the creek runs by ....oh my!
Thank you again Myron. You did a video that for few minutes focused on the Spring Mountains West of Las Vegas. I lived in Pahrump for a bit, up on the west side of the Spring Mountains. I studied the alluvial fans there in great detail (for my level of knowledge). This video provides a lot of information about what goes on there and now I am really wanting to go back and look again.
My home town is Jackson Wyoming. The big slide that occurred on the Gros Ventre river above Kelly Wyoming is what comes to mind as soon as i saw the title to this video. My family lost property and homes in the slide and the flood that occurred when the dam formed by the slide broke. That was before i was born but i am old enough to remember the slide that occurred in Yellowstone Park. If you live in a mountainous area its very likely that there are slide prone areas near you, look around you could be surprised by what you see.
Amazingly well done video! I remember after taking Geo 101 at university, how quickly my view changed of building projects. I could not believe how much silly home placements there were and hos often it went wrong. With just a little knowledge me and my family can be a lot safer. Great job sharing this and getting it out there.
I'm grateful that my place of residence is relatively low in the danger category. Not many landslides on the Canadian prairies, lol. But if you get caught unprepared outside in the winter, you could be in serious trouble. Extreme cold and high wind speeds are a lethal combination.
Another geology-related warning sign that lots of developers seem to ignore: beautiful rocky narrow river valleys where there are old logs on the cliffs hundreds of feet above the river. That one should be even more blatantly obvious than the landslide info presented here.
I'm here at the blue ridge mountains near Harper's ferry...signs say watch for falling rock! Now after 50 years I get it! Some of us are slow... you cought me up... thanks 👍
Thanks. Myron I appreciate your video today as that it brought back memories of what my Geology 101 professor said about the Warm Spring Mass on a field trip in about 1995-6. He told us that it was actually slow moving landslide. The developers were building like crazy in the area. I believe it only speeded up the process of the landslide.
Dear Myron Cook, your videos are so interesting and answer so many questions about the earth. In South Africa where I live we have had some serious landslides in coastal areas following heavy rains. People build on sand dunes at the coast for seaviews, and their homes slump down the dunes. The province of Kwa-Zulu-Natal is very hilly, and homes are built all over the hills. I am enjoying your presentations. Avril from RSA
There was a slide just south of Reno in 1982. The mountain is even called Slide Mountain. Decades earlier, a rancher made a small reservoir. When the slide occurred, it slid into the reservoir making the land slide bigger. It slid all the way to the valley below killing 3 people.
Excellent video. I like how you tie in geology with common situations, like buying property and building homes, that ordinary people want to do. Your presentation of geology to the average person is excellent. You don't insult us, you inform us.
The more I watch and learn, the more I realize I chose the wrong profession. I should have studied to be a geologist. When I was in my early teens, If I had been exposed to geology, being taught in a straightforward, simple to understand way as is here. I would have gone in a different direction. That would have changed the course of my life. Sure wish UA-cam was available back in the 70.
It's profound. I've really learnt a lot as I was planning to built a house in the hills. It's going to be a turning point for me and possibly a lifesaver. Thankyou
There are often very large areas at some risk and it may not be practical to avoid them. The key is to find the home or lot with the least amount of potential hazard.
Thank you very much. I’ve learned something new today. Your style of teaching appeals very much to me, so much that I’m eager to keep on learning and listening. Keeping focused is never an issue on your channel, said the 47 yr electronic engineer (bsc) 😂 #keeponlearning
What do you think caused the Turkey Olive Grove collapse? Do you think that whole area is likely to collapse?
As I understand, it was caused by a large mining operation. Hopefully, it is done with collapsing.
Imagine if we had lifespans of one or two billion years! We would see the surface of the Earth is being fluidic. Stability would probably not be a word in our lexicon.
County and municipalities should hire geologists to assess the stability of slopes in areas where homes are to be built before approving a development permit.
This isn't just a video on geology. This is a master course in how to be an excellent teacher.
I was thinking exactly the same thing. The topic is interesting to me but the instruction is the reason I stayed for the entire video. Not everybody can be an instructor.
Yes, this was very clearly explained, and easy to absorb. Lots of information and knowledge here I've never given much thought too before seeing this video.
I was thinking it was both.
THANK YOU!
Using drone footage and Google earth images to give a context to what a person walking on the ground is *very* useful. It was a very neat way to get a visual idea of history. This goes to show that those who don’t study history are prone to repeating past events.
Thank you Myron 🎉for your concisse explanation of what to look for!
I never would've thought I'd be so interested in watching geology videos but there's just something so magnetic about an expert talking passionately about the field they love. It really draws you in. Thank you, Myron.
it's like you're sitting down and chatting with an old friend. at least, for me, it is.
There are plenty of experts, but none of them are Myron, and none of them act like your very cool grandad. :)
This is one of the subjects presented in school that should be absolutely fascinating, and the presenter manages to beat that last vestiges of interesrt out of the subject matter.
Same here!!
Absolutely have the same reaction here. I look at stones and rocks and feel they are able to tell a story if I could understand the language. Myron helps me learn it.
We need more Teachers like Mr. Cook. Thank you for all you do for us.
I was looking at a model townhome in Sedona Az. Up against a magnificent, red, shear cliff. Walked out onto the back patio and looked up. I saw a boulder about the size of a 2 car garage nearly straight up. "Who in the world,..." I thought as I quickly left the death trap.
The Turtle Mountain landslide in southwestern Alberta is particularly impressive. A jumble of house size boulders extending kilometers from the mountainside that collapsed, extending through the town. They found an infant crying atop one of the boulders; amazing that anyone in the path survived.
In the "they shouldda knowed" department: this landslide was not natural; it was caused by badly engineered coal mines in the mountain. So easy to dig straight into the mountain at the base!
i presume this would be visible on Google Earth. i will take a look at it after the video is finished. i never heard of this incident and hope that everyone that could be saved, was.
Check out the slide in Greece for a massive induced slide
Search Google Earth for Turtle Mountain, the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre appear on the edge of the slide. The boundary of the slide shows how massive it was.
The infant story is an urban legend. Think about massive boulders from an entire half of a crumbling mountain and any set of circumstances where a baby gets tossed from a house and lands safely on top of one.
Hi Myron!
My house was built on a hill in 1950 (fairly lax building codes at that time) so I have long been concerned about seismic liquifaction of the earth mound under my foundation.
One thing I have going in my favor is a colony of Locust trees with theie spreading roots.
I have encouraged the Locust tree roots to form a basket around my dirt mound and I hope that will help hold it all together in the (admitedly unlikely) event of a seismic episode strong enough to cause concern (since I live outside of Baltimore, not known to be particularly siesmically active).
I appreciate this video because I take this very seriously.
I must say, you did some great demonstrations to aid in visualizing the hydraulic pressures involved in driving landslides.
Wow, the scale of those very large landslide complexes makes me feel very tiny in comparison.
Sadly the La Conchita slide law suits awarded the victims with tons of money and financially ruined the guy with the avocado farm at the top of the cliff even though expert witnesses said his irrigation had nothing to do with the land slide. It had rained 40 inches that year, nearly three times the yearly average but they had the nerve to blame the farmer. The county also got off scott free even though they allowed people to build homes in a well known hazard site and did not inform those owners of the risks. So the one guy who had absolutely nothing to do with the idiocy of living in La Conchita paid with his entire livelihood and property was taken from him. It was one of the greatest miscarriages of justice I've ever seen.
Another great UA-cam geologist who explains geologic processes “the rest of us can understand!😊
Very nicely done. I'm recalling landslides both historically and recently in southcentral Alaska. Of course the Lituya Bay event was enormous, but there were so few people there it was not som harmful. The 1964 quake, magnitude 9.2 coerced many potential locations to slide, both above ground and below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. In November of 2022, a landslide in Haines killed a couple of folks as their homes were washed into the sea. Thanks for the great perspectives!
Myron my dude, your voice and way you calmy and clearly present your topics is fantastic. Many notes should be taken by other channels on how to communicate with their audience. Thank you!
Well said. And thanks to Myron.
😅😮😅😅😊🎉🎉🎉😢😢😢🎉😢
@@JayDownSouth No u
I just love the time every few weeks we get to spend online watching your videos and learning. This was one of the few that wasn't hard for me, since here on Hawai'i Island it's very easy to see the scarping and slumps from old landslides. So when you were showing the views from your drone i was easily picking out the features of the slides.
Thanks for sharing such fascinating geology! I've taken a particular interest in landslides and have been mapping out landslide events that make headline news or posted via social media. By mapping out these events, its hard not to see that, more times than not, landslides happen along certain geological formations, which I still need to gather more notes to say for sure. I never tire keeping record and studying the geology of landslide regions ... there's always something new to learn. Your presentation gave me a greater understanding of the dynamic process of landslides! Another ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ geology lesson!
You have a neat hobby!
What a helpful video you have made and shared with us. We can now see the bigger picture and know where unscrupulous developers are pushing their luck with new housing.
I’ve long wondered how developers get away with building houses and developments in ecologically dicey areas. They should be required to get a geological threat assessment that’s made available to the public before getting a license to build and should be held responsible if they chose to build in a bad area and people die. People do such selfish and reckless things putting others at risk in the pursuit of profit.
GEOLOGY TIME!!!! YESSSS!!!
Thank you for sharing your incredible knowledge!
I live near Oso, I remember vividly driving through the slide the day they cleared the road.
The scary thing that few talk about is what's heavily suspected to have influenced the slide is how the hillside was logged back in the old days. Because of how they logged and terraformed the hill it created an unnatural funnel for rainwater down the slope, eroding and weakening the soil and causing it to be deeply unstable. And worse than that, their methods were apparently no uncommon throughout the whole PNW - which means there's certainly more to come in the future.
I drove through that summer. I remember it vividly.
I just thought I would paste a comment in this same video:
"I remember driving through the landslide in Oso, WA right after it happened (after the hwy was reopened of course) it was devastating . I spoke with a couple Sauk-Suiattle natives and they said their grandmothers called it "The Walking Valley" and knew not to build in that specific area."
Another great lecture. Thank you very much professor.
Myron, you keep knocking them out of the park! This was another fantastic video and I deeply appreciate you doing these. Once you learn how to spot things like scarps, moraines, clusters of lakes, and fossilized sand dunes you can never unsee them. You start to see and appreciate the history embedded in the landscape that has been staring you right in the face the whole time. It is magical and deepens a person's appreciation of time and space.
Glad you like them!
I really Like Your style. Always so informative without sounding like you're talking down. It's like we're going on the learning adventure.
This video in particular really got me thinking.
it's like chatting with a buddy over a cup of strong coffee and a fat slab of pie.
Thanks for another well done lesson in geology.
I was living in Santa Barbara near La Cochita during the time of both slides. They were both heavy rain years. 1995 had two 500-year rain events, 10 Jan & 10 March. The 2005 rain came down more or less steadily over a week or 10 days. The soils were just clay muddy, very slide prone. Many slumps are visible along that stretch of Hwy 101. After the 1st slide a retaining wall of big steel I-Beam piles with timbers secured by the I-beam channels had been put in place along the warning signs about the slide dangers.
People stayed anyway and even moved ther due to cheap property values. Leading up to the 2005 slide water pressure at the base of the slide was causing water to spray out between timbers. Many people left, but several stayed with the deadly consequences.
Ironically, an avocado rancher at the top of the plateau was sued, accused of “overwatering”. The rancher lost - crazy Cali!🤦🏻
If they had two 500-year rain events in the same year, that tells us they don't actually know what the 500-year rain event is, and their current estimates are way off.
Avocados are a thirsty crop, but I dont put it past Americans to put overly litigous. They need 70 liters for a single avocado, there other water intensive crops that we love like almonds and oranges but damn that shit is insane. Maybe the farm shouldnt have been so upstream so to speak.
It was winter, nobody irrigates their orchards at that time of year. Compared to the amount of rain received, it would be nearly impossible to irrigate an equivalent amount of water, let alone pay for it.
@@scottyallen7237 Good context, I meant to comeback and add to my previous comment that also maybe folks shouldnt have set up downslope of a historically dangerous area.
There was a lot of debate if Ventura County should forcibly evict people from living there in La Conchita. There may have been warnings posted. People who lived there were aware of the risk, but may have rationalized false comfort from the temporary barrier installed in an attempt to stabilize the slope. People are still living there today.
Your an amazing geologist and professor. Thank you for bringing this information to the world in a profound explanation tion. Your drone footage is outstanding, and very high quality. I don't think you would be able to produce a higher quality educational video. Nice work! Looking forward to the next one Myron.
Another great lesson Mr Cook. Thank you again for taking the time to share your knowledge.
My pleasure!
I remember driving through the landslide in Oso, WA right after it happened (after the hwy was reopened of course) it was devastating . I spoke with a couple Sauk-Suiattle natives and they said their grandmothers called it "The Walking Valley" and knew not to build in that specific area.
Wow
Thank you Myron Cook - this is the second time I have watched this very informative video. Your "teaching style" makes is pretty easy for anyone to learn and recognize landslide areas. There were a number of landslide or slumping residential areas in San Diego that got quite a lot of publicity a number of years back.
These landslides with their bulging hills & lake formation, might be the answer for the Green, un-conformity boundary layer that is found in New Mexico, & elsewhere right? Thanks Myron, our Geology Guru!
Its always a great day when Myron Cook gives us another fantastic video! I had to go to the bank today and they had a print on the wall and it was fun to try and work a geologists eye on it. I counted 20+ layers in a portion of it, I just wish I knew where the photo was taken so I could learn more about.
When you talked about landslide scars I hope Im not too presumptious in my own understanding to say that you were cleverly standing right on top of some! I absolutely love the way you structure these lectures, I know Id be just as engaged in a classroom setting with such perfectly curated visual aides.
Now I know why they always called them escarpments on Time Team, cause it was typically the result of erosion and/or landslides that made the steep surfaces theyd be rappeling and carefully digging in.
As you got to the pip demonstration I was reminded of glimpses of some hard bedrock exposed in a couple of your shots and it immediately stood at as a red flag. Relatively thin soil with an immberable is a recipe for disaster
OOH MY GOD THE MASSIVE SCARPE AT 37:05. It boggles the mind to imagine what seeing that wouldve been like. And then seeing the chain of stones indicating shoulders thatve been really weathered in the next one, mega yikes.
Thank you for making the measurements easily understandable for Europeans.
The view at the 3:15 mark is quite striking. I see evidence on the right side of the stream of an older bajada, or linked series of alluvial fans, a depositional feature, that is now being actively eroded by the stream. In addition to down-cutting it appears that there is a significant landslide hazard on the “hummock-y” slope between the fans and the stream bank, and that the margin of the old alluvial fan is actually a scarp created by extensive areas of the old fan slumping into the drainage.
Edit: Ooof. Myron zooms in with the drone on exactly that scene at the 27:00 minute mark.
At the 33:00 minute mark at the Oso, WA slide, one of the common features of all 4 slides seems to be that they occurred at the OUTSIDES of meander bends where erosion is progressing the fastest and “over-steepening” the slopes above the outsides of the meander bends faster than other parts of the drainage. The Oso debris flow pushed the stream across the valley and now the OPPOSITE side of the river will be the outside of the meander bend, making that the more likely location for a future slide.
So glad you mentioned Grand Mesa. Had the opportunity to do some soil and lake sediment coring there while working on my undergrad and those slump and rotational blocks created the ideal conditions to get data that can help us reconstruct passed climatic conductions (up until the last glacial maximum). Such a beautiful place and great video!
Wow!! This is an eye opening video. I'll take a closer look at my home and property after watching this. Thanks for the education!!
I grew up near the Oso slide. So horribly traumatic for the entire community. This valuable information could save a lot of lives.
Provided people can be convinced to take it seriously.
I just happened to watch this video a week ago. Then I witnessed the very thing Mr.Cook was discussing. The tropical storm Hilary hit California this past week and multiple landslides occurred. A sad thing for the people who live there. If only they had this knowledge before looking for a home to buy. Thank you for all your efforts and sharing your knowledge with us.
Absolutely *STUNNING* area. I’m blown away 😮
It really is!
I am in no way a geologist, and I watch these videos out of curiosity. Who would have thought that I'll get something that practical and useful! Thank you so much!
My father was a geologist. I wish I spent more time listening to him. He started working in in the 1930s in what is now Zambia (Northern Rhodesia then). He was looking for minerals but had to look out for lions and crocodiles and hippos. He had to hunt for meat. He became an excellent shot. Some incredible stories from that time. If anyone is interested, I could expand.
Very educational. Thank you for the excellent patient geology.
Its a good day when Mr Cook posts a new video!!!
agreed. *_Doc Rock_* makes the type of videos that youtube was made for.
@@JohnLeePettimoreIII WIsh I had a teacher like this when I was back in school!!!
@@greekpapisame. For the short period of time I was able to endure school, my teachers were almost exclusively dried up, humorless, husks.
Wow, wow -- brilliant video, important video. This could save enormous money and more importantly many lives. Where I live in the SLC area of Utah large numbers of people live on the slopes of the mountains in areas called ... benches. Late spring of this year, thanks to the heavy rains and snowfall we received over the winter, there were a number of homes destroyed through a combination of flash flooding and minor landslides. Thankfully no one was killed, but a number of very expensive homes were destroyed or made uninhabitable.
I've learned a lot about geology and the world around me thinks to guys like you and Shawn Willsey. The use of modern tools like Google Earth and drones provide a perspective that must be changing geology as we speak...
If you're building a structure on any of these locations . . . probably just pitch a tent.
Thanks Myron for another awesome video. I learned a lot. The way springs pop out of hillsides was a big one for me. Cheers
Interesting how LIDAR images made the underlying ancient landslide boundaries so clear.
That' was one of the most educational videos I've seen on landslide understanding.
I love this guy's talks!
Once again I find that 38 minutes and 47 seconds doesn't reach the end of my attention span when the subject matter and teacher are so well synched with each other. Thank you, Myron.
Exceptionally well made and educational. Vital info that I never thought of or would have found out spontaneously..
Just WOW! Super interesting and super well told! I've seen only two videos on the channel, and I find it one of the most interesting channels! Thank you, Sir, for doing a fantastic job in telling about geology!
Wow, thank you!
Love listening to you teach about geology.
FYI. The July 12 landslide landslide atop the Palos Verdes Peninsula may have been caused by a broken water pipes under one of the homes that was lost to the slide. Prior to the slide, the neighbor got a water bill over $1000. It must have been broken for several months.
The part that really shocks me is that those locations are not what I would call steep. These videos are truly interesting!
WOW! I knew some of this. Now I know so much more. My dad in the mid 1960s vetoed several locations of land mom wanted for a weekend cabin site. He said no because of snow avalanche and/or landslide danger. He was an old school woodsman. We would drive through Oso long before people lived there. Dad was always nervous because he said it had an old history of slides. Then in college I was thinking of a geography major when a large slump type slide occurred along the Yakima River in Kittitas County WA. The professor spent a lecture about that slide, what slump slides are, and how they are very common in Eastern Washington. Now that I've been watching you and a couple of other geologists I see details in land better than three years ago. I had begun to recognize alluvial fans better. Yet this video has really furthered my vision greatly. At the beginning I missed some of the danger until you pointed them out. This video needs to be required training for city planner and developers when getting their licenses, especially in the western US. Thank you.
Love his presentstions because he gets out into the field & makes learning real world not just classroom.
Once you see it you can't unsee it. Thank you!
Always nice to come up on a Myron video I missed.
Because of your videos I actually look at the world through a new lens. Thank you.
thank you!
You are an amazing teacher Myron. Thank you for your videos!
Hammocky and slumping areas were forever planted in my vision after a physical geology course. As a Wyomingite, the wonders of geology is etched in my bones. Never build where trees and posts lean.
Developers want to make money, land buyers must be smarter.
Nice videos!
This brought back many childhood memories. I was born and raised on the East Coast of the North Island of NZ. Once the forest cover was removed to create stock farms the soft mud stone under the small layer of topsoil became very susceptible to extreme slipping. I have seen an area where water pressure blew a block of land, the size of a couple of acres off the hill side. The slide seemed to jump of the hill then slide to the bottom. by thge end of the rain event over 80% of the hill side grass was gone, either in the slide or was ripped out as the slide wnt down the hill.
Gotta love mudstone dissolving when wet!!!
Thank you Myron, I appreciate all your lessons 👍🏻
Your videos are always first class, and very informative, thank you
Glad you like them!
Wow…excellent video. Thank you sir!
Great video! Entertaining, educational and essential!
First time I heard the term mass-wasting since high school back in the mid-1980s. Thanks for the video, thumbs up and have a nice day.
Thank you Byron for providing knowledge that will be a great advantage looking for property to build or buy a home. In the 1980's while in the LA area attending a geology symposium we took a field trip to a new subdivision being developed located on a hillside over the San Andreas Fault with obvious slump blocks. The joke was they were building soon to be split level homes! Although it was no joke. Obvious the danger of of slumping hill sides was being overlooked. If I recall correctly the development was "red tagged" and halted due to the potential danger.
24:20 these graphics really helped me better visualize/understand what you were demonstrating. i thank you very much for this. for me, it did wonders to clarify your message.
Thank you Myron for this outstanding public service!
Land For Sale? Great view of the ocean. Light rolling hills between mountains. No need to consult any experts here. It will
be fine. Thirty years later after many heavy rains, earthquakes, floods, etc. and all of a sudden it is not. Great eye opening
video professor. Glad I live in the Midwest or I would be calling you!
I'll never look at South Fork the same way again. I've seen plenty of spots where slumps had obviously occurred but I just haven't looked at it on the scale you've shown us. It's incredible to think of and once again... learning has occurred. Your videos are always educational and thoroughly enjoyable my friend.
Thank you! The Dubois area is similar
@@myroncook I'll be through there tomorrow... and I'll be thinking about that.
That was excellent! I live in the Limousin area of France, just outside an old village, in a house that began to be built about 150 years ago, on a pile of rocks, but without the kind of foundation that would be normal today. I‘m satisfied that it will be here for another 150 years, but the house is surrounded by underground streams. Your video has helped me to understand more about the geology underneath my feet. Thank you so much for your very clear, and very timely, explanation!
I learned about ancient landslides while reading about the St. Francis dam failure near Los Angeles CA. The designers back then probably had no idea that they were building on one, potentially leading to its failure. Once I learned to see the clues, I started seeing them on most hillsides.
A perfect example of bad planning or surveying is the 2018 Rattlesnake Hills landslide just south of Union Gap, WA. A materials company was working on a hillside, basically parallel tp I-82. About 20 acres of the hill started to go downhill toward the highway. They lined up a few railroad train Box Cars filled with concrete, and lined them alone the bottom of the hill. It was pretty interesting how they were following how fast it was moving. The mining company closed and the Dept. of land management installed sensors. Thorp Rd. and I-82 were in danger.
Thank you. Fascinating to watch, have never viewed land this way before.👍
The various land topology shown reminds me of the area of Turkey where all the ancient settlements now being rediscovered were/are. You can tell that land that seemed solid was capable of shifting; indicating a reason for the various building stages and structure burials.
This is so interesting! I'm a retired civil engineer and we studied landslides of this type. You would look at a circular cross section, the length of the shear line, and the weight and centroid of the soil volume to calculate the most probable slide cross section. I wish we could have watched this video back in 1976! I was fascinated by the landslide in Spanish Fork Canyon near the town of Thistle. It would be interesting if you could talk about the Thistle landslide.
I do know that slide...was in school studying geology when it happened
As a delegate from the Miami Florida Airport Landslide Authority, I must say I enjoyed your presentation very much. We need your your help with a problem that our resident astrologer predicted could occur as a result of landslides in our area. (planetary alignments and that sort of thing)
We have plenty of government money to fund your project.
Sincerely,
Harvey Gruntsplatter
MFALA
Thank you! The two debris flows you mentioned are perhaps just one, with a river cutting it into two.
The landslide in the thumbnail of your video, Oso, is where my cousin lost the majority of his moms side of the family. Three generations buried in an instant. It's sad to see that the tragedy was known to have been inevitable from at least 1999, and nothing was done. There are still houses being built in the area that are known to have similar risk.
It was a terrible tragedy
This is a great piece. I've been a geologist for several decades now. This is a well put together presentation. It has a good tone and pace for education. It could be the standard for all folks that evaluate and approve building plans and civil works. Nature always wins so it's best we not get in the way. Great presentation.
Thank you!
You just described exactly where I live... I've been up my mountain and seen the seeps ... not to mention the table top monster rocks 10 feet from my house... that the creek runs by ....oh my!
Good to know! Thank You! Excellent footage and maps... just exceptional!
Thank you again Myron. You did a video that for few minutes focused on the Spring Mountains West of Las Vegas. I lived in Pahrump for a bit, up on the west side of the Spring Mountains. I studied the alluvial fans there in great detail (for my level of knowledge). This video provides a lot of information about what goes on there and now I am really wanting to go back and look again.
Thanks for sharing
My home town is Jackson Wyoming. The big slide that occurred on the Gros Ventre river above Kelly Wyoming is what comes to mind as soon as i saw the title to this video. My family lost property and homes in the slide and the flood that occurred when the dam formed by the slide broke. That was before i was born but i am old enough to remember the slide that occurred in Yellowstone Park. If you live in a mountainous area its very likely that there are slide prone areas near you, look around you could be surprised by what you see.
Amazingly well done video!
I remember after taking Geo 101 at university, how quickly my view changed of building projects. I could not believe how much silly home placements there were and hos often it went wrong. With just a little knowledge me and my family can be a lot safer. Great job sharing this and getting it out there.
Thanks for sharing!
WOW!! Thankyou again Myron!!
I’ve always been interested in geology,there’s nothing more fascinating to me than what goes on beneath the surface. Glad I came across this channel.
You and me both!
I'm grateful that my place of residence is relatively low in the danger category. Not many landslides on the Canadian prairies, lol. But if you get caught unprepared outside in the winter, you could be in serious trouble. Extreme cold and high wind speeds are a lethal combination.
Another geology-related warning sign that lots of developers seem to ignore: beautiful rocky narrow river valleys where there are old logs on the cliffs hundreds of feet above the river. That one should be even more blatantly obvious than the landslide info presented here.
I'm here at the blue ridge mountains near Harper's ferry...signs say watch for falling rock! Now after 50 years I get it! Some of us are slow... you cought me up... thanks 👍
Brilliant! Thank you for this beautiful example of geomorpology in practice. Cheers!
Thanks. Myron I appreciate your video today as that it brought back memories of what my Geology 101 professor said about the Warm Spring Mass on a field trip in about 1995-6. He told us that it was actually slow moving landslide. The developers were building like crazy in the area. I believe it only speeded up the process of the landslide.
wow
Dear Myron Cook, your videos are so interesting and answer so many questions about the earth. In South Africa where I live we have had some serious landslides in coastal areas following heavy rains. People build on sand dunes at the coast for seaviews, and their homes slump down the dunes. The province of Kwa-Zulu-Natal is very hilly, and homes are built all over the hills. I am enjoying your presentations. Avril from RSA
Great to hear from you so far away...
There was a slide just south of Reno in 1982. The mountain is even called Slide Mountain. Decades earlier, a rancher made a small reservoir. When the slide occurred, it slid into the reservoir making the land slide bigger. It slid all the way to the valley below killing 3 people.
Another fun video! I’ve seen like 5-10 videos now that capture my interest, awesome work!
Excellent video. I like how you tie in geology with common situations, like buying property and building homes, that ordinary people want to do. Your presentation of geology to the average person is excellent. You don't insult us, you inform us.
Thank you. I definitly learned something really valueable.
The more I watch and learn, the more I realize I chose the wrong profession. I should have studied to be a geologist. When I was in my early teens, If I had been exposed to geology, being taught in a straightforward, simple to understand way as is here. I would have gone in a different direction. That would have changed the course of my life. Sure wish UA-cam was available back in the 70.
Enjoy what you can
Awesome information! You keep pointing out things that are obvious only after you have educated us. Thank you for all of your videos
So nice of you
It's profound. I've really learnt a lot as I was planning to built a house in the hills. It's going to be a turning point for me and possibly a lifesaver. Thankyou
Glad it was helpful!
You are the face of geology... I can't think of another one!
Hahaha I love these videos. Thank you.
Glad you like them!
You are an absolutely wonderful teacher 👍
I always enjoy these videos and learn a lot from them. Thank you for making these.