The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides.
I have frequently highlighted the growing impact of multiple landslide events triggered by extreme rainfall around the world. Whilst there is little doubt that such events are becoming more common, they have occurred through history too. I recently came across a paper (Fiorillo et al. 2019) that documented such an event in 1954. The account is fascinating.
The paper sought to use historic aerial images and topographic data to reconstruct an inventory of the landslide triggered during this event. The location is the area around the villages of Vietri sul Mare and Maiori, which are sited on the beautiful Amalfi Coast in the Campania region of southern Italy. This is the area in the vicinity of [40.67, 14.73] – the Google Earth image below shows the landscape as it is today:-
The analysis of Fiorillo et al. (2019) indicates that in parts of this area, 500 mm of rainfall fell in the storm that triggered these landslides. They have mapped over 1,500 landslides triggered by the storm – these are shown in the map below:-
As the map shows, the density of landslides was extremely high in the hills above Vietri sul Mare and Maiori. The failures were mostly shallow landslides, with many transitioning into channelised debris flows.
In total, it is believed that 316 people lost their lives in this disaster. There is some archive footage of the aftermath in the Youtube video below:-
Reference
Fiorillo, F., Guerriero, L., Capobianco, L., Pagnozzi, M., Revellino, P., Russo, F., and Guadagno, F. M., 2019. Inventory of Vietri-Maiori landslides induced by the storm of October 1954 (southern Italy). Journal of Maps, 15 (2), 530–537. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/17445647.2019.1626777
