The small community of Good Hope, on the east coast of nestles along a narrow valley
bottom by Grand Marigot Bay. By nightfall of November 11, 1986, the community and surrounding area had experienced several days of heavy rainfall. Earlier that day, a small landslide developed in the cutslope of the Castle Bruce-Petit Soufriere road where it crosses the steep hillslope above the town. Except for this landslide, the rains had produced no other unusual events. Shortly a f t e r 3:00 a.m. on November 12, 1986, nearly 17,000 cubic meters of soil and weathered rock slid from the hillslope above the Castle Bruce-Petit Soufriere road. Bananas, coconut, and bay trees growing on the hillslope were swept away. The rapidly moving slide mass destroyed citrus trees and vegetable crops growing below the road. The slide engulfed the health clinic near the base of the s1ope, seriously injuring a nurse and killing her ten-year-old daughter in their sleeping quarters. Several meters farther downslope, the impact of the slide shoved the primary school partly off its foundation, collapsed the back wall, and buried the upslope side to the roof
line. As the debris came to rest, the toe of the slide deposited material 1 to 4 meters deep along a
15-meter length of the principal street through Good Hope. on the slope above, a 90-meter section of the Castle Bruce-Petit Soufriere road lay blocked by the upper slide mass.
It is important to note that landslides have caused injury in Dominica
The unfortunate death to the nurse's daughter at Good Hope was not the first landslide-caused fatality on Dominica. Between 1925 and 1986, twenty-five Dominicans lost their lives to landslides (Fig. 11). These fatalities represent only those occurrences for which the place, time, and number of people involved could be ascertained. As such, this figure represents they minimum number of fatalities for this period. The nurse is the only injury due to a landslide, which can be documented for Dominica. It is known her injuries required a recovery period of several months.
In most instances, fatalities on Dominica result from debris flows inundating homes. This was the case at the community of Bagatelle in 1977. Rain-saturated soil on a hill slope adjacent to the community mobilized into a rapidly moving mass. It engulfed four homes at the edge of the village killing eleven inhabitants. An exception to this circumstance is the death in 1984 at Belvue Chopin. Several landslides previously developed on the slope above the main road as noted in the earlier discussion of road construction triggering landslides. On November 6, 1984, another failure from this site sent a mass of debris down the road. This flow swept away a hapless pedestrian walking down the road during the storm.
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