| 1911 |
Sarez, Tajikistan (Turkestan, Russia)
|
7.4 |
Ninety people killed.
A gigantic landslide blocked the
Bartang River, destroying Usoy and
several other villages in a sparsely-populated
area, creating Sarez Lake
(Sarez Kol, Sarezskoye Ozero). The
landslide created a dam 4-5 kilometers thick
and 703-788 meters (2,306-2,585 feet) high,
with an estimated mass of 7-10 billion
metric tonnes (about 7.7-11 billion
short tons). This natural dam is
roughly 10 times higher and about 1100
times the mass of the Madison Canyon
Slide that created Earthquake Lake
after the Hebgen Lake, Montana quake
of August 18, 1959. That landslide
created a dam up to 73 meters (240 feet) high
and had an estimated mass of 73
million metric tonnes (80 million
short tons).
From
N.V. Kondorskaya and N.V. Shebalin, eds., New Catalog of Strong
Earthquakes in the U.S.S.R. from Ancient Times through 1977, NOAA
National Geophysical Data Center Report SE-31, Boulder, Colorado,
1982. (Update and English translation of Noviy Katalog Sil'nykh
Zemlyetryaseniy na Territoriy SSSR s Drevneyshikh Vremyen do 1975
g., USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 1977.);
E. Christopherson, The Night the Mountain Fell, The Story of the
Montana-Yellowstone Earthquake, Earthquake Press, Missoula,
Montana, 1962.;
and
O. Klotz, Earthquake of February 18, 1911, Bulletin of the
Seismological Society of America, 1915, 5, 4, p. 206-213.
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U.S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey