Rain in Balkans cause flood and landslides

Three months-worth of rain have fallen in three days in the Balkans, causing widespread floods and landslides. The torrential rain has caused an estimated 2,100 landslides in Bosnia, covering roads, homes and whole villages. Seen from the air, almost a third of Bosnia is under water. Officials say about a quarter of the population – a million people – live in the worst-affected areas in the north-east. A further 1,000 landslides have been reported in Serbia. At least 43 people have died, and authorities expect this figure to rise. The floods are also affecting neighbouring Croatia, where two people are missing and hundred have fled their homes. Tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes, and there are also concerns that power plants in the region could be knocked out. Landmines laid in the war in the 1990s have also been disturbed. More information A landslide is a geological phenomenon which includes a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, deep failure of slopes and shallow debris flows, which can occur in offshore, coastal and onshore environments. They occur when the stability of a slope changes from a stable to an unstable condition. This can be caused by a number of factors, acting together or alone. Natural causes of landslides include:

• Groundwater pressure acting to destabilise the slope
• Loss or absence of vertical vegetative structure, soil nutrients, and soil structure
• erosion of the toe of a slope by rivers or ocean waves
• weakening of a slope through saturation by snow melt, glaciers melting, or heavy rains
• earthquakes adding loads to barely stable slope
• earthquake-caused liquefaction destabilising slopes
• volcanic eruptions