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Monday, December 28, 2015

ODOT Mud Slide

 
OR 42 slide in southwest Oregon
New video of the massive slide that's closed OR 42 between #Roseburg and #CoosBay. 
Geologists are on scene surveying a fix. No estimated time to reopen.
Posted by Oregon Department of Transportation on Monday, December 28, 2015

It's been raining.

2 days later: Changed the video source from Facebook to YouTube. Note the undisturbed areas of crushed rock. Looks like this place has caused problems before and some of the fixes held. This wasn't just a mudslide where the ground turned to liquid and slid down the hill. Here the whole shoulder of the hill broke loose and slid down basically intact.
    Looks like drones might be good for something besides tracking down terrorists in the Mid-East. For the price of getting a helicopter into the air, never mind spending any time there, you can buy a drone, drive to the site, record this video, and if you don't crash, you've still got the drone. Getting an overview of this disaster from a helicopter would likely cost $1,000, and you wouldn't get the closeups of the road surface.
    Dirt comes from rocks that have broken down. Topsoil has organic matter mixed in with it, but 100 feet underground there isn't much organic material. It's just dirt. Dirt comes from rocks. How long does it take to break down rock into dirt? How long does it take to generate that much dirt? That hill has been there for a long, long, time.

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