Abstract

The landslides kill many people every year in Nepal and in the Himalayan region, which devastates society in the local area. A famous living memory of an example of landslide induced devastation was the landslide at Tinau river that took place in early September 1981 damming the river completely, which breached after few days causing huge flood downstream. The flood swept away concrete tower of the Tinau Hydropower Project, two suspension bridges, one concrete bridge at Butwal, part of Butwal city was completely damaged and many hundred people lost their life. Similarly, on the night of 2nd August 2014 (02:30 AM), a huge landslide, famously known as "Jure Slide", took place along Sunkoshi River valley on Araniko Highway that connects Kathmandu with Tibet. The landslide killed 156 people who were on sleep in their houses, savaged 120 houses, partially damaged 37 more, dammed Sunkoshi river creating an artificial dam of approximately 50 m high and an approximately 3 km long reservoir was formed. A huge flood occurred after partial breach of the dam damaging barrage structures of the Sunkoshi Hydropower Project located about one kilometre downstream from the slide area. It took over two months to drain artificially created reservoir. The main aim of this manuscript is to describe and evaluate Jure landslide. Critical aspects on the causes of landslide will be highlighted giving emphasis on topography, geology, rock mass, monsoon, and earthquake.

Introduction

Subduction of Indian Plate beneath the Eurasian Plate has evolved high Himalayan mountain chain covering about 2500 km stretch from Karakorum in the west to Myanmar in the East. While, the width of the Himalayan range extends barely about 200 km within which the altitude varies from approximately 65 masl to ∼8849 masl "The Mount Everest". Substantial increase in height within relatively short distances has resulted mountain topography very rough and steep with narrow river valleys where people reside. The region is known to be very dynamic due to active monsoon and frequently occurring earthquakes of different magnitudes. Numerous North-South flowing rivers cross cuts mountainous topography leading to extreme erosion along the valley slope during every monsoon. Both monsoon rain, large variation in temperature over the year and frequent earthquakes make Himalayan rock mass weather relatively fast. As a result, frequent landslides occur during monsoon period and large-scale earthquake events. In general, earthquakes functions as catalyst for largescale landslides since long persisting discontinuities are formed during periodic earthquake episodes [1].

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