The July 2021 Atami, Japan Landslide: “A Man-Made Calamity”

“This is hell,” a survivor said after a steep slope failed in the idyllic resort town of Atami, Japan, sending a torrent of mud careening into houses and people. Ten are dead, seventeen still missing as of this writing.

Landslides are a grim fact of life in many areas with steep topography. Gravity works. Things get loose and come down. Travel into the mountains basically anywhere, and you’ll see the evidence: streaks of bare earth where trees have been swept away, cascades of boulders marking areas where rock failed under the influence of weathering and physics. Sometimes earthquakes shake things until they topple. It seems like the most natural thing in the world.

But not this time. Nothing about this tragedy was natural.

(more…)