Often, the deadliest landslides happen with little warning. I have driven through the Frank Slide in the Crowsnest Pass many times and always find it quite eerie to consider that some of the town’s residents remain buried under the 70 million tons of limestone that slid down Turtle Mountain on April 29, 1903. Here are a few facts about landslides:
- In 2013, the Bingham Canyon landslide caused 16 small earthquakes when about
Landslides is a non-fiction resource for readers in Grades 3 – 5 and will be released in 2016.
147 million tons of land fell.
- More than 30,000 people died worldwide in landslides in 2005. This was the highest number for any year in the 21rst century.
- A giant asteroid hit Mars billions of years ago, causing a landslide the size of the United States.
- The US Geological Survey uses helicopters to drop spider units in areas where landslides have already begun and it is too dangerous for people to work.
- If you see new cracks in pavement, swells in the ground, leaning telephone poles and fences, the land may have started to move in a landslide.
