Posted on 03/24/2014 1:00:53 PM PDT by Mariner
It gets very unstable when soaked.
Combine a bunch of rain like they've had this winter with a good-sized earthquake and it would be catastrophic. Much of the land mass would become soup.
I lived in the Seattle area for 45 years and have ridden my bicycle through the area covered by that slide. I moved to Central KY in 2011. We own two fingers of a plateau about 80 feet over the valley below. My wife was asking about slides here. I’ve worked the dirt in both areas. here, if you dig down a few feet you get clay and limestone. It’s basically a big rock under us. Completely different.
It would have to be. We get torrential rains here on a regular basis (anything that can slide, has slid). That’s why I spent all day Saturday with my tractor re-grading the steep hill of our driveway that brings you up from the valley. It’s made of the dirt and when leaves clogged my ditch, it re-directed those torrential rain fed waters right down the middle of my driveway, creating an 18” deep and 12” wide grand canyon meandering right down the middle of it.
But when I dug out my ditch, I eventually hit the clay. It’s not going anywhere in a hurry.
The graded bank tends to assume it’s angle of repose.
Prayers up for the survivors and their families.
Hard to believe this happened in the US.
Yeah. It hints at why valleys are deeper and sides more sheer on Mars.
A couple of dump truck loads of chert rocks would likely diminish that problem......................
We actually had it professionally graded and put a three inch layer of “dense pack” down. But that was a little over 3 years ago. I’m going to complete the crown in it tonight and throw another load of dense pack down. It should hold us over at least another three years, partly because I’ve done a better job of re-directing the water flow this time.
BTW, concrete or asphalt is a no-no - it becomes a skating rink in freezing weather. Gravel gives good traction except with thick snow and ice, which we very rarely get.
Hard to believe this happened in the US.
And it’s nothing compared to what would happen if Mt Rainier just burped, much less actually erupted.
There are two problems to solve:
1. Break up the power of the flow of water.
2. Make it go somewhere where it won’t be a problem.
Your situation sounds exactly like where my daughter and her family live: On the down side of a steep hill that is not county maintained. Every rain they get washouts...................
Another ‘solution’ is to plant some vegetation that has deep roots to keep the soil in place................
Meanwhile, CNN is still “BREAKING NEWS!” with nothing new to report about MH370.
I guess that’s easier and cheaper than actual “Reporting”.
Good grief! How do you go from 3 dead to 8 to 108 missing and miss that info? Do the news orgs not even care about those NOT living in a city?
if Rainier’s snow cover melts, Tacoma would be swept away by the Puyallup and the Nisqually valley would become a canyon.
But over time the ditch on the hill side filled in with too much leaf debris and successfully blocked the overwash water causing it to veer right into the center of our road. The rain was torrential and even the dense pack could not withstand it.
I've significantly deepened the ditch and will deepen it further, eliminating the halfway point wash off but also fill it with those rocks that are approximately 7" diameter that everyone uses around here for ditches. That should make the fix permanent with minor necessary maintenance. BTW, Here is the hill (in the background). You only see the bottom but the hill (with the tip of the house showing) gives you an idea of how high it goes. And all of that climb is on the front of the hill.
Before we bought it (note the for sale sigh behind our rental car)
From the top (shortly after we purchased it and different rental car):
Notice that in both of those pictures it is just indigenous "gravel and rather bumpy. After we graded it, laid down the dense pack, and I trimmed those trees, it was actually very nice. And when we get the dense pack in, it will be again.
Scary thought all the way around
The Tideflats in Tacoma, not to mention Fife, would certainly be ruined, but most of Tacoma would survive being that most of it is WAY above the Puyallup River valley.
That area is pretty isolated, despite its proximity to Seattle. There aren’t a lot of ways to get heavy equipment in there to uncover these sites.
That looks amazingly similar to my daughter’s place, only less steep. Their road is at about a 40 degree angle.
Their problem is sand. The water just washes it away by the ton.........................
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