At 11:00 p.m. on 20 September 1988, a huge

rockslide A rockslide is a type of landslide caused by rock failure in which part of the bedding plane of failure passes through compacted rock and material collapses ''en masse'' and not in individual blocks. Note that a rockslide is similar to an avalanc ...

occurred in the Darbang region of

Nepal Nepal (; ne, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne, सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mai ...

. The

landslide Landslides, also known as landslips, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, deep-seated grade (slope), slope failures, mudflows, and debris flows. Landslides occur in a variety of ...

killed 109 people and buried all the houses in the right bank of the river. The volume of landslide was estimated to be about 5 million cubic meters with a dimension of about 750m high ranging from the elevation of 1750 to 1000 m and width of 500m. The debris dammed the Myagdi river for three hours. The debris was gradually eroded by the river without causing flooding in the downstream region. The cause of slide is not known clearly because there was no rainfall in the area during the landslide period or any earthquake. However, about a month earlier, an earthquake of 6.7

Richter scale The Richter scale —also called the Richter magnitude scale, Richter's magnitude scale, and the Gutenberg–Richter scale—is a measure of the strength of earthquakes, developed by Charles Francis Richter and presented in his landmark 1935 ...

had occurred in eastern Nepal. About 62 years earlier, a similar landslide killed about 500 people in the same region.

References

Landslides in Nepal Natural disasters in Nepal 1988 in Nepal 1988 disasters in Nepal Landslides in 1988 {{Nepal-stub