On August 8, 2010 a giant mud slide hit the town of Zhouqu killing over 1700 people and 600 missing. There were many factors that led up to the land slide:
weather: the region had recently experienced heavy rains from the monsoon season. The heavy rain creates lots of mud.
Topography: This area in china borders the Himalayas and has many mountains which have thick forests and also has many rivers and valleys.
Forestry: the forests have been logged for trees as an industry for over fifty years, since the great leap forward in its communist history. The stripping of the mountains sides have exposed the underlying soils and sediments.
Rivers: The rivers have lots of dams and hydro electric plants to support china's growing need for electricity and energy.
Earthquakes: This region experiences frequent earthquakes with some that are very large and disastrous the most recent large earthquake was in 2008.
Dams:
The mudslide left a thick layer of sludge around 5 km long and 500 meters wide on the center of town. Many bodies are believed to be buried in the mud but authorities banned their recovery on the following Sunday due to concerns over public health. 10,000 soldiers and rescuers arrived soon to go through the mountains of mud that buried several parts of the zhouqu county. Engineers also worked to blast the debris that has passed through the town to partially block the Bailong river, causing more flooding. Zhouqu gets earthquakes and landslides a lot but geological experts and residents blamed the sloppy construction of mud slide barriers, lack of good monitoring and warning systems and rapid urban development as causes and factors of the disaster. A 2003 study on Zhouqu by Gansu's Geo-environment monitoring center found that road building in the mountains had to an extent raised the chances of geological disaster. The government forested the area much faster then the forest could replenish and by the time the government realized the problem and started to plant trees to establish the soil, the vegetation was unable to take root on the steep, thinly soiled slopes.
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