A major landslide has occurred in the vicinity of Altos de Oriente and Manantiales, near to Medellín and Bello, in Colombia. It is believed that about 25 people died.
On 24 June 2025 at 3:20 am, a large landslide occurred in the vicinity of Altos de Oriente and Manantiales, near to Granizal in Colombia. At the time of writing, 13 bodies have been recovered and a further 12 are missing. In total, 50 houses were destroyed.
I don’t yet have the precise location of this landslide tied down. A map on the El Colombiano news site places it at [6.30905, -75.53277], but this is yet to be confirmed.
There is very good aerial footage of it in a news report posted to Youtube by Cubrinet:-
At around 1 minute 45 seconds into this footage, this image is captured-
This image shows the crown of the landslide:-
The failure has occurred in deeply weathered regolith. It is a debris slide, with the main portion being comparatively deep-seated. It is notable that there is a considerable volume of water visible in the images:-
Some news sites note that a water pipe has ruptured in the landslide. The failure occurred during a period of very heavy rainfall – the El Colombiano site quotes a local resident as saying:-
“It was raining all day and all night. About 10:00 p.m. there was a downpour that cleared before 2:00 a.m. When it wasn’t even raining, we heard the noise and when we found out, we realized that the mountain had come and covered the entire neighborhood”.
Sometimes, a small failure associated with heavy rainfall can rupture a water pipe, which feeds water into the slope, triggering a much larger landslide.
Low down in the track of the landslide, it has spread and bifurcated, controlled by the topography:-
Thee are concerns about a further landslide at this site, imperiling the teams charged with recovering the victims.
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