Around midnight on August 8, 2010, a violent surge of loosened earth roared down mountain slopes and slammed into quietly sleeping neighborhoods in Zhouqu County in Gansu, China.
The catastrophic mudslides—the deadliest in decades according to state media—buried some areas under as much as 23 feet (7 meters) of suffocating sludge. 1,765 people died. Property damages totaled an estimated $759 million. Cutting from right to left, this detailed image, from DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-2 satellite, shows the largest slide in the lower part of the city on August 10, 2010.
Image Credit: Digital Globe, DigitalGlobe usage policy
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