One week ago a sudden landslide swallowed a house and in Saint-Jude, Quebec, northeast of Montreal, killing a family of four. The landslide created a hole of ragged earth 100 feet deep, 300 yards wide and a third of a mile long.
This was not the first event of its kind in the area. It turns out the ancient formation of this area as a seabed affects the way the land behaves today.
Charlotte Mehrtens is chair of the geology department at the University of Vermont. State Geologist Larry Becker is a State Geologist with the Vermont Geological Survey.
They spoke with VPR’s Jane Lindholm about the geologic conditions that led to the tragedy in Quebec, and the geologic events that created the marine clay in this region