The Shoal Creek Landslide

 


    There is a wilderness trail which runs through the outskirts of Austin, Tx. Being from Houston, I don't really think all that much of Austin. As my uncle likes to say, "we don't claim them." That said, I have been on the Shoal Creek Trail, and it really is beautiful. Central Texas is one of the most amazing places on Earth, in my opinion, and walking through the green hills of Shoal Creek is enough to put one's worried heart at ease. 




Texas is not, overall, a state with much variation in elevation. Truth be told, aside from the "hill country," Texas is pretty flat. Thus, we don't have to deal with landslides very often unlike a more mountainous state like Idaho or Colorado. This means that when they do happen, they tend to take residents completely by surprise and cost local governments quite a lot of money. Such is the case with the Shoal Creek Landslide that happened in May of 2018. A large rain event led to oversaturation of ground which developers had believed was stable but which turned out to be mostly clay. This resulted in the now heavy and soaked ground giving way and sliding rapidly down a newly created slope around 4 am in the morning on May 8th of that year. The landslide happened only about 20 feet from the backyards of several houses within a housing development, and left those houses perched on a previously non-existent cliffside. 


 It's one of the few landslides in recent Texas history. Thankfully nobody was hurt, but it is costing the city of Austin many millions of dollars in cleanup and to secure the ground in the area in order to prevent more landslides; unfortunately, another collapse did occur in 2019, but by that point most of the ground had been secured and disaster was averted. Ast last estimation, this diasaster and oversight in civil planning is costing upward of 20 million dollars to repair, and repairs are continuing into 2021. 


For more information, here are some local news websites which covered the collapse:

https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/austin-homes-feet-from-drop-off-after-shoal-creek-landslide

https://foxsanantonio.com/news/local/four-central-austin-homes-near-edge-of-new-cliff-after-shoal-creek-landslide

https://www.fox7austin.com/news/new-collapse-at-landslide-on-shoal-creek-greenbelt













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