1970 Huascarán debris avalanche

Common card · No. 237477

On 31 May 1970, a debris avalanche and mudflow triggered by the Ancash earthquake destroyed the town of Yungay, Peru and 10 nearby villages, leaving up to 30,000 people dead. It is the deadliest avalanche or glacier-related disaster in history, surpassing the death toll from the previous deadliest avalanche disaster, the avalanches of White Friday on the Italian front of World War I and the third or fourth most deadly landslide-related disaster of the 20th century, after the Haiyuan landslides (China), the Armero tragedy (Colombia) and by some estimates the Khait landslide (Tajikistan). The north peak of Huascarán from which the avalanche originated had been considered unstable since 1962, when a smaller collapse wiped out several villages of the Callejón de Huaylas valley near Yungay. However, the provincial government made efforts to prevent the news from spreading and urged people not to panic. The 1970 earthquake destabilized a glacier and snowmass which surged rapidly downhill, becoming...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Håkan Svensson Xauxa, CC BY 3.0