On steep or steep slopes of mountains, river valleys or sea coasts, landslides often occur when huge masses of rocks break off and fall down. The (scientific) collapse is often caused by groundwater or surface water activity, weathering or earthquakes. But the ancient Kirghiz, for example, believed that the Earth rests on the horns of a huge bull. When he gets tired of carrying it, he begins to throw it from one horn to another - from this it shakes. In Siberian legends, the bull is replaced by an elk, in Japan - by a fish, in India - by an elephant, among other peoples - by a dragon.
Most of the "holders" of the Earth behave calmly and peacefully. Only sometimes they get so angry that they start to do something unimaginable. That's when people begin to say: "The dragon is waking up," and then terrible landslides occur.
Ten thousand years ago, a stone avalanche hit the slope of the Kabir Kug ridge in southwestern Iran. A streaming stone stream three hundred meters thick - twenty billion cubic meters of rock - came down in an earthquake from the northern slope of the mountain. He crept into the valley, climbed six hundred meters up from the opposite side, and stopped only twenty kilometers later. Even today, the sharp ridges of the mountain avalanche are more than fifty meters high.
Landfalls are known that led to large human casualties. So, in 1608, part of the Monte Conto mountain collapsed in the Alps, and in the blink of an eye more than two thousand inhabitants of the village of Plur were buried in their homes under a mass of stones and soil.
The collapse of September 10, 1881 entered the history of Switzerland as one of the most serious events. Then about ten million cubic meters of earth and stones fell from the slopes of Mount Chingelberg.
For a long time, the inhabitants of the village of Elm, as if even looked with envy at their neighbors, who mined roofing slate and grew rich. And then they started their own career. But since the Elms did not have any mining experience, they made a 50-meter deep excavation in the rocky side of the mountain overhanging the village.
And difficulties began almost immediately. Roofing slate blocks began to slide along the bedding, stones fell, and several workers were injured at the very beginning of the development of the field. The confused inhabitants of Elm turned to the cantonal authorities for help, and they sent a forester to the village. He, after a cursory inspection, announced that everything would be fine soon, it was only necessary to remove the trees from the slope above the quarry.
Of course, nothing worked out, since the next day the whole mountain crawled. The mountainside, undermined by improperly laid quarries, collapsed, and a stone avalanche buried the village of Untertal and destroyed part of Elmo.
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Only after this did the cantonal authorities see that the matter had taken a serious turn, and sent geologist Albert Heim to the site of the disaster. He immediately began to survey and was horrified to find that the collapsed rocks were moving like a mighty stone stream. People who tried to escape on the nearest hill were not saved, as a stone avalanche swept over this hill as well. The stream had a length of one and a half kilometers and a width of four to five hundred meters.
The accounts of the surviving eyewitnesses were dramatic, but from them Geim determined the speed of the flow. She reached 180 kilometers per hour. It seemed downright fantastic, and Albert Heim was not believed at first. But then the correctness of his calculations was confirmed by other data.
Throughout Elme, a single house has been preserved intact, standing on the edge, although its 76-year-old owner was also filled up. When they dug him up, he said:
“I stood at the kitchen doors facing the street, heard and watched in horror as the mountain collapsed. I thought that my wife and son were at another door, and I wanted to go to them. But then the house crackled, I was caught by the wind and thrown into the kitchen.
Then I suddenly realized that I could not budge. I don’t know how it happened, but standing, I was covered with debris and stones up to my neck. It was impossible to move either arms or legs. In addition, I was tormented by fear for my wife and son. After a long and terrible wait, I suddenly heard the voice of my son.
- Is there anyone there?
“Yes, Sepp,” I shouted. - Hurry here!
I was so glad that someone else had survived. Then my son started to dig me out."
The stones did not injure the old man, they seemed to "flow" past him. He survived, however, a very strong nervous shock, but soon recovered from it.
With the exception of this family, all 115 people died in the village of Elm - men, women, children.
HUNDRED GREAT DISASTERS. N. A. Ionina, M. N. Kubeev