The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides.
On 25 July 2024, a major landslide occurred at La Rivière quarry near Rovon in Isère, France. This landslide, which occurred at around 7 pm local time, crossed the D1532 road. At the time of writing it is unclear as to whether there was anyone on the road when the landslide occurred.
The failure was caught on a remarkable video, which has been posted to Twitter:-
Stunning landslide tonight at 7 pm at La Rivière near Rovon (Isère, Vercors foothills)! 😱Major event was preceded by a smaller one in early afternoonThe departure area is above a quarry, near Mont Arte Deposit locally up to 20m thick reached the road!https://t.co/b1P41iegc3 pic.twitter.com/O5NCia4EF4— Melaine Le Roy (@subfossilguy) July 25, 2024
There is an excellent report, plus a number of images, on the Franceblue website.
The location of the quarry is [45.2139, 5.4907]. This is a Google Earth image of the site:-
Google Earth image of the site of the 25 July 2024 landslide at La Rivière in France
Google Street View image of the site of the 25 July 2024 landslide at La Rivière in France
The image in the Tweet below, from Le Soir, shows the aftermath of the landslide. It appears to have affected a large amount of material beyond the edge of the quarry:-
But note the planar surface at the front of the landslide scar. To me this appears to be a pre-existing discontinuity – maybe a joint or a fault – that extends into the actively quarried area. This plane of weakness looks to have been the rupture surface.
Attempts are now underway to search for, and to rescue, anyone trapped beneath the rubble.
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