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Seydisfjordur
- The village of Seydisfjordur (population 750) in Easter Iceland experienced the worst avalanche disaster in
Iceland's history in 1885. A memorial to that event, constructed from beams bent by the avalanche, can be found near the church:
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- Major avalanches from the northern slopes above Seydisfjordur seem to occur when an avalanche high on the mountain side
triggers the movement of snow on a plateay lying some 400 m above the village. Existing work has focused on reducing the potential for such an event by constructing a catching dam on the plateau.
Higher frequency events releasing from the slopes directly above the village have not been dealt with yet. The main dam is the highest constructed in Iceland at 20 m:
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- There is also a second dam to constrain flow from a slightly different direction:
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- The slopes above and below the dams are steep as shown here from various perspectives.
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Neskaupstadur
- There are a large number of avalanche paths above the town of Neskaupstadur (population = 1500) in eastern Iceland. As yet, only one of these has attracted defensive measures.
The strategy adopted combines snow nets in the starting zone to hold back the snowcover with a dam protecting the houses. The first two images show the starting zone and the nets:
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- The retaining wall has had to be positioned much further upslope than is ideal because of the proximity of the houses. This has meant that the design is supplemented by two rows of mounds that are
designed to extract energy from the flow before it reaches the wall. These mounds were designed based on flume experiments performed as part of the CADZIE and SATSIE projects.
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- Close-up views of the wall and mounds:
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