The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides.
On 25 July 2024, a major landslide occurred at La Rivière quarry near Rovon in Isère, France. This landslide, which occurred at around 7 pm local time, crossed the D1532 road. At the time of writing it is unclear as to whether there was anyone on the road when the landslide occurred.
The failure was caught on a remarkable video, which has been posted to Twitter:-
There is an excellent report, plus a number of images, on the Franceblue website.
The location of the quarry is [45.2139, 5.4907]. This is a Google Earth image of the site:-
The image in the Tweet below, from Le Soir, shows the aftermath of the landslide. It appears to have affected a large amount of material beyond the edge of the quarry:-
But note the planar surface at the front of the landslide scar. To me this appears to be a pre-existing discontinuity – maybe a joint or a fault – that extends into the actively quarried area. This plane of weakness looks to have been the rupture surface.
Attempts are now underway to search for, and to rescue, anyone trapped beneath the rubble.
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