A landslide or landslip is a geological phenomenon which includes a wide range of ground movement, such as rockfalls, deep failure ofslopes

and shallow debris flows, which can occur in offshore, coastal and onshore environments. Although the action of gravity is the primary driving force for a landslide to occur, there are other contributing factors affecting the original slope stability. Typically, pre-conditional factors build up specific sub-surface conditions that make the area/slope prone to failure, whereas the actual landslide often requires a trigger before being released. Landslides occur when the stability of a slope changes from a stable to an unstable condition. A change in the stability of a slope can be caused by a number of factors, acting together or alone. Natural causes of landslides include: groundwater (porewater) pressure acting to destabilize the slope Loss or absence of vertical vegetative structure, soil nutrients, and soil structure (e.g. after a wildfire) erosion of the toe of a slope by rivers or ocean waves weakening of a slope through saturation by snowmelt, glaciers melting, or heavy rains earthquakes adding loads to barely stable slope earthquake-caused liquefaction destabilizing slopes volcanic eruptions

Landslides are aggravated by human activities, Human causes include: deforestation, cultivation and construction, which destabilize the already fragile slopes vibrations from machinery or traffic blasting earthwork which alters the shape of a slope, or which imposes new loads on an existing slope in shallow soils, the removal of deep-rooted vegetation that binds colluvium to bedrock Construction, agricultural or forestry activities (logging) which change the amount of water which infiltrates the soil. The Goldau on September 2, 1806 The Cap Diamant Qubec rockslide on September 19, 1889 Frank Slide, Turtle Mountain, Alberta, Canada, on 29 April 1903 Khait landslide, Khait, Tajikistan, Soviet Union, on July 10, 1949 Monte Toc landslide (260 millions cubic metres) falling into the Vajont Dam basin in Italy, causing a megatsunami and about 2000 deaths, on October 9, 1963 Hope Slide landslide (46 million cubic metres) near Hope, British Columbia on January 9, 1965. The 1966 Aberfan disaster Tuve landslide in Gothenburg, Sweden on November 30, 1977. The 1979 Abbotsford landslip, Dunedin, New Zealand on August 8, 1979. Val Pola landslide during Valtellina disaster (1987) Italy Thredbo landslide, Australia on 30 July 1997, destroyed hostel. Vargas mudslides, due to heavy rains in Vargas State, Venezuela, on December, 1999, causing tens of thousands of deaths. 2007 Chittagong mudslide, in Chittagong, Bangladesh, on June 11, 2007.
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2008 Cairo landslide on September 6, 2008. The 2010 Uganda landslide caused over 100 deaths following heavy rain in Bududa region. Zhouqu county mudslide in Gansu, China on August 8, 2010.
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Devil's Slide, an ongoing landslide in San Mateo County, California 2011 Rio de Janeiro landslide in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on January 11, 2011, causing 610 [20] deaths.

Causes of landslides
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Intense rain triggered widespread landslides in southern Thailand during the last week of March 2011.

The causes of landslides are usually related to instabilities in slopes. It is usually possible to identify one or more landslide causes and one landslide trigger. The difference between these two concepts is subtle but important. The landslide causes are the reasons that a landslide occurred in that location and at that time. Landslide causes are listed in the following table, and include geological factors, morphological factors, physical factors and factors associated with human activity. Causes may be considered to be factors that made the slope vulnerable to failure, that predispose the slope to becoming unstable. The trigger is the single event that finally initiated the landslide. Thus, causes combine to make a slope vulnerable to failure, and the trigger finally initiates the movement. Landslides can have many causes but can only have one trigger as shown in the next figure. Usually, it is relatively easy to determine the

trigger after the landslide has occurred (although it is generally very difficult to determine the exact nature of landslide triggers ahead of a movement event). Occasionally, even after detailed investigations, no trigger can be determined - this was the case in the large Mount Cook landslide in New Zealand 1991. It is unclear as to whether the lack of a trigger in such cases is the result of some unknown process acting within the landslide, or whether there was in fact a trigger, but it cannot be determined. Perhaps this is because the trigger was in fact a slow but steady decrease in material strength associated with the weathering of the rock - at some point the material becomes so weak that failure must occur. Hence the trigger is the weathering process, but this is not detectable externally. In most cases we think of a trigger as an external stimulus that induces an immediate or near-immediate response in the slope, in this case in the form of the movement of the landslide. Generally this movement is induced either because the stresses in the slope are altered, perhaps by increasing shear stress or decreasing the effective normal stress, or by reducing the resistance to the movement perhaps by decreasing the shear strength of the materials within the landslide.

In the majority of cases the main trigger of landslides is heavy or prolonged rainfall. Generally this takes the form of either an exceptional short lived event, such as the passage of a tropical cyclone or even the rainfall associated with a particularly intensethunderstorm or of a long duration rainfall event with lower intensity, such as the cumulative effect of monsoon rainfall in South Asia. In the former case it is usually necessary to have very high rainfall intensities, whereas in the latter the intensity of rainfall may be only moderate - it is the duration and existing pore water pressure conditions that are important. The importance of rainfall as a trigger for landslides cannot be under-estimated. A global survey of landslide occurrence in the 12 months to the end of September 2003 revealed that there were 210 damaging landslide events worldwide. Of these, over 90% were triggered by heavy rainfall. One rainfall event for example in Sri Lanka in May 2003 triggered hundreds of landslides, killing 266 people and rendering over 300,000 people temporarily homeless. In July 2003 an intense rain band associated with the annual Asian monsoon tracked across central Nepal, triggering 14 fatal landslides that killed 85 people. The reinsurance company Swiss Re estimated that rainfall induced landslides associated with the 19971998 El Nino event triggered landslides along the west coast of North, Central and South America that resulted in over $5 billion in losses. Finally, landslides triggered by Hurricane Mitch in 1998 killed an estimated 18,000 people in Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemalaand El Salvador. So why does rainfall trigger so many landslides? Principally this is because the rainfall drives an increase in pore water pressures within the soil. The Figure A illustrates the forces acting on an unstable block on a slope. Movement is driven by shear stress, which is generated by the mass of the block acting under gravity down the slope. Resistance to movement is the result of the normal load. When the slope fills with water, the fluid pressure provides the block with buoyancy, reducing the resistance to movement. In addition, in some cases fluid pressures can act down the slope as a result of groundwater flow to provide a hydraulic push to the landslide that further decreases the stability. Whilst the example given in Figures A and B is clearly an artificial situation, the mechanics are essentially as per a real landslide.

1 May 1961 - A landslide occurred in Ringlet, Cameron Highlands, Pahang. 21 October 1993 The man-made Pantai Remis landslide caused a new cove to be formed in the coastline. 11 December 1993 - 48 people were killed when a block of the Highland Towers collapsed at Taman Hillview, Ulu Klang, Selangor. 30 June 1995 - 20 people were killed in the landslide at Genting Highlands slip road near Karak Highway. 6 January 1996 - A landslide in the North-South Expressway (NSE) near Gua Tempurung, Perak. 29 August 1996 - A mudflow near Pos Dipang Orang Asli settlement in Kampar, Perak, 44 people were killed in this tragedy. 15 May 1999 - A landslide near Bukit Antarabangsa, Ulu Klang, Selangor. Most of the Bukit Antarabangsa civilians were trapped. 20 November 2002 - The bungalow of the Affin Bank chairman General (RtD) Tan Sri Ismail Omar collapse causing landslide inTaman Hillview, Ulu Klang, Selangor. December 2003 - A rockfall in the New Klang Valley Expressway (NKVE) near the Bukit Lanjan interchange caused the expressway to close for more than six months. 31 May 2006 - Four persons were killed in the landslides at Kampung Pasir, Ulu Klang, Selangor. 26 December 2007 Two villagers were buried alive in a major landslide, which destroyed nine wooden houses in Lorong 1, Kampung Baru Cina, Kapit, Sarawak. 12 February 2009 - one contract worker was killed in a landslide at the construction site for a 43storey condominium in Bukit Ceylon, Kuala Lumpur. 21 May 2011 - at the Children's Hidayah Madrasah Al-Taqwa orphanage in FELCRA Semungkis, Hulu Langat, Selangor.

Causes
Deforestation due to uncontained development of hillslope areas are partly the cause of a majority of landslides in Malaysia. There were some instances where the development projects at hill sites were abandoned for a considerable period, affecting the maintenance of the slopes could causing them to collapse. [edit]Measures

to reduce landslides

Immediate action has been taken and is being planned by the federal government to help remedy landslides problems in Malaysia. Such actions include: The construction of the retaining wall Plant more trees along hillsides Make sure to build houses on firm ground