Richard Préfontaine and his wife, Lynne Charbonneau, were watching a playoff hockey game with their two daughters on Monday night when the ground beneath their house gave way suddenly and without warning.

The house’s bright green metal roof was all that was visible the next day in a vast mud crater near the village of St. Jude, Quebec, about 50 miles northeast of Montreal. The landslide created a hole 100 feet deep, 300 yards wide and a third of a mile long.

The family’s remains were found huddled together on a couch by the television, with rescuers discovering only their golden retriever, tied to a tree, alive.

On Wednesday, officials allowed residents of several nearby houses to return home. But the family’s shocking demise was a stark reminder of a hidden menace under many parts of Quebec, one that dates back 10,000 years to an ancient inland sea.

Michel A. Bouchard, a professor of geology at the University of Montreal, said the area around St. Jude rests on an unusual variety of “sensitive clay” that was originally the bed of an ancient sea. Lake Champlain is a remnant of the sea.

Because the clay formed in salt water, Professor Bouchard said, the molecular structure of its particles resembles playing cards arranged as an unstable house of cards, rather than stacked in a deck, as occurs with clay formed in fresh water. A variety of events can break the molecular bonds holding the clay particles together. When that occurs, the clay can spontaneously liquefy with little or no provocation.

“Even a fly landing on the surface can set it off,” he said.

Deadly or disruptive landslides involving the clay, sometimes known as Leda clay, take place occasionally in Quebec and eastern Ontario. In 1971, 31 people died and 40 houses were destroyed by a landslide in St.-Jean Vianney, Quebec. The town of Lemieux, Ontario, east of Ottawa, was relocated in 1991 after officials became concerned about the stability of the clay underneath the town. Two years later, a landslide consumed 42 acres near Lemieux’s former location.

以下是新浪網(wǎng)的報(bào)導(dǎo)：

11日晚上，蒙特利爾的圣裘德(Saint-Jude)村莊當(dāng)?shù)匾患宜娜苏诘叵率依锸湛疵商乩麪柤幽么笕岁?duì)對(duì)抗匹茲堡企鵝隊(duì)的冰球比賽。大地突然裂開(kāi)巨大縫隙，而他們的房屋正好處于這個(gè)裂縫的中心位置。房屋被吞噬后，相關(guān)部門隨即展開(kāi)搜救工作。

魁北克省緊急情況處理協(xié)調(diào)員邁克爾·道爾表示：“在廢墟里經(jīng)過(guò)一番挖掘和搜索，我們終于找到了四名遇難者的遺體。他們都緊挨在一起，依稀可以看出事故發(fā)生前，他們正躺在地下室房間的沙發(fā)上。四名遇難者分別是這個(gè)家庭的父親、母親和兩個(gè)大約11歲的女兒?！?br>
據(jù)悉，此次地表裂開(kāi)的洞比四個(gè)足球場(chǎng)還大，吞噬了三輛車，破壞了一條水泥公路，還有遇難者的這座房屋。搜救人員挖掘了整整一天，才終于進(jìn)入了這座只有綠色屋頂還露在外面、其余部分幾乎完全被泥土覆蓋的房子。消防部門發(fā)言人弗朗克斯？格里高爾說(shuō)：“這個(gè)裂縫太大了，災(zāi)難降臨得太快簡(jiǎn)直不可想象?！?br>
然而，這座被吞噬的房屋被認(rèn)定并不在最危險(xiǎn)的地帶上，所以這次事故讓整個(gè)村莊都陷入了恐慌。專家介紹，這個(gè)區(qū)域的地層幾乎都是由上個(gè)冰川時(shí)代較低海岸流域堆積的粘土構(gòu)成，而粘土非常敏感，一旦被破壞就會(huì)失去凝固力度，引起山體坍塌或者地面傾斜。而如果水流破壞了土地結(jié)構(gòu)，或者地面以下的巖石移動(dòng)，就可能發(fā)生地表裂縫。

加拿大自然資源局介紹，類似的粘土層事故在幾個(gè)世紀(jì)中已經(jīng)造成100多人死亡，其中就包括1908年發(fā)生在魁北克省Notre-Dame-de-la-Salette和1971年發(fā)生在St-Jean-Vianney的兩次大破壞性災(zāi)害。


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