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The moment the GROUND came to life: Terrifying video shows 'earthflow' phenomenon creeping across a Russian track, pulling trees and power lines with it
Continue reading about earthflows and watch video
Most people would run away if they saw a pile of soil and rubble creeping towards them as if it had a life of its own.
But one Russian YouTuber captured the terrifying moment a stream of soil flowed down a bank next to a main road, crushing trees in its powerful path and leaving toppled power lines in its wake.
The eerie phenomenon is called an 'earthflow' and is a rare type of landslide.
Alexander Giniyatullin kept a remarkably steady hand filming the scary scene in the Kemerovo Region of Russia, which is thought to have happened at around 1pm on April 1, according to a blog post on the American Geophysical Union’s website.
In the video, snow-covered soil can be seen sliding down the bank at the side of a road, which is thought to run between Novokuznetsk and Bolshaya Talda.
The earthflow also blocked nearby railroad tracks and caused power outages, but no one was hurt.
Commenting on the post, a user called Michal said: ‘The landslide looks like it may have come from a large coal mine area.'
As the earthflow gathers momentum, it can be seen crushing trees in its path, and the sound of crumbling soil and splintering wood can be heard in the video.
The cameraman backs away as the material eerily creeps across the width of the road, where he was previously standing and it seems to spread along the bank at a walking pace.
An earthflow is a viscous flow of fine-grained materials, such as clay, sand and silt that have been saturated with water and moves downhill because of the pull of gravity.
As the earthflow runs down a slope, it remains covered with any vegetation and typically leaves a bowl-shaped depression behind.
It is slower than a mud flow, which can cover villages beneath mud in minutes.
Earthflows usually begin in a large basin on the upper part of a slope where debris and weathered material accumulate, - although this point cannot be seen in the video.
WATCH VIDEO:
WHAT IS AN EARTHFLOW?
- An earthflow is a type of landslide.
- It's a viscous flow of fine-grained materials, such as clay, sand and silt that have been saturated with water and moves downhill because of the pull of gravity.
- As the earthflow moves down a slope, it remains covered with any vegetation and typically leaves a bowl-shaped depression behind.
- Earthflows usually begin in a large basin on the upper part of a slope where debris and weathered material accumulate.
- They are usually triggered by heavy rainfall, so that when the debris becomes saturated with enough water, it starts flowing downhill.
- The speed of an earthflow can vary depending on the amount of water present and the angle of the slope and varies from 0.11 to 12.4 mph (0.17 to 20 km/h)
Alexander Giniyatullin kept a remarkably steady hand filming the scary scene in the Kemerovo Region of Russia (shown by the red marker), which is thought to have happened at 1pm on April 1
Source
American Geophysical Union blog
MORE ON EARTHFLOWS:
Types of mass wasting: Creep and Earthflows
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