The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides.
I have now compiled the initial data for the fatal landslides that occurred globally in 2024. As ever with these update posts, this is subject to review, but it provides an initial dataset.
The headline figures are as follows:-
Number of fatal landslides in November 2024: 44
Number of confirmed fatalities: 329
The long term mean for November is 32 fatal landslides, so this is very significantly above the norm. It is the second highest November in the record (the highest was 52 in 2008), although I also recorded 44 fatal landslides in November 2020.
This takes the annual total number of fatal landslides to 728. This is the annual graph with November included:-
And this is a the same data plotted by the total each month:-
Key events in November 2024 include:
- A landslide in Dschang in Cameroon on on 5 November that is reported to have killed 62 people;
- A major landslide on the banks of the Tsiribihina River in Madagascar that is reported to have killed 16 people;
- at least one landslide in Buluganya in Bulambuli district of Uganda, which is reported to have left 133 people dead or missing.
I have also recorded fatal landslides in countries as diverse as India, Bolivia, Afghanistan, Turkey, Philippines, Guyana, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia and Peru.
Whilst landslide numbers continue to run substantially above the long term mean, the extreme levels that were recorded earlier in the year now appear to be easing off a little.
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