Pit Stop @ Frank Slide!

in #nature7 years ago

Hello Steemit! I wanted to share a part of a trip I took recently through Canada. We stopped here for a break at Frank Slide going through Crowsnest Pass in Alberta, Canada.

Its amazing how far the landslide actually traveled, and a sad tragedy in the end.

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[Pictures by @Mrs-Green]

The Frank Slide Story
At 4:10 a.m. on April 29th, 1903, 82 million tonnes of rock fell from the summit of Turtle Mountain into the Crowsnest River valley below. The slide lasted a mere 90 seconds and in that short time at least 90 people were killed – Canada’s deadliest rockslide.
At the southeast edge of the small coal mining town of Frank, buildings were on fire and survivors called for help. Despite the obvious devastation, the pre-dawn darkness hid the magnitude of the event from the people of the Crowsnest Pass – then a clustered grouping of coal mining communities in the Canada’s Northwest Territories – today part of the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass in the southwestern corner of the Province of Alberta.
The rockslide buried the eastern outskirts of the town. It also obliterated a two kilometre stretch of the Canadian Pacific Railway, surface buildings of the Canadian American Coal and Coke Company, two ranches, 1.5 km of the Frank and Grassy Mountain Railway line to the historic coal mining town of Lille, a construction camp, and livery stables. Fortunately, most of the town's populace – 600 people – lived literally a stone's throw beyond the area buried. Just over one hundred people were in the direct path of the slide, and twenty-three of those, in cottages on Manitoba Avenue in the southeast part of town, escaped death.
[http://history.alberta.ca/frankslide/frankslidestory/frankslidestory.aspx]

IMG_5247.JPG
[Pictures by @Mrs-Green]

Thanks for visiting and checking out my post!

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