Those of us who deal with erosion aren’t unfamiliar with the effects of landslides, but some particularly devastating and tragic ones have occurred in the last week: a series of them in Brazil, where more than 200 people died when heavy rains caused slides near Rio de Janeiro, and another one just today in the Italian Alps that derailed a train, killing nine people.
In the Italian landslide, the cause seems fairly clear. An irrigation pipe burst, saturating the ground and causing the mudslide, which unfortunately hit the tracks just as a commuter train was passing that point. The cause of the pipe failure is being investigated; officials don’t believe it was cold enough for water in the pipe to have frozen.
The Brazilian slides are more complicated. Where land is scarce around large cities, people build homes on unstable hillsides. In Niteroi, near Rio, the Morro Bumba slum, which was partly built on top of an old garbage dump, was almost entirely wiped out. Nearly a week of heavy rain (and more is predicted) saturated the soil and decimated the hillsides. The state civil defense department in Rio estimates that 14,000 people are homeless and another 10,000 houses are in danger. Officials are planning to remove as many as 13,000 families from their homes in other slums in the same area.
In January, more than 70 people died in landslides and floods in Brazil. Two years ago in the southern part of the country, flooding and mudslides killed more than 100 people and left 80,000 homeless.