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.

以下是新浪网的报导：

11日晚上，蒙特利尔的圣裘德(Saint-Jude)村庄当地一家四人正在地下室里收看蒙特利尔加拿大人队对抗匹兹堡企鹅队的冰球比赛。大地突然裂开巨大缝隙，而他们的房屋正好处于这个裂缝的中心位置。房屋被吞噬后，相关部门随即展开搜救工作。

魁北克省紧急情况处理协调员迈克尔·道尔表示：“在废墟里经过一番挖掘和搜索，我们终于找到了四名遇难者的遗体。他们都紧挨在一起，依稀可以看出事故发生前，他们正躺在地下室房间的沙发上。四名遇难者分别是这个家庭的父亲、母亲和两个大约11岁的女儿。”

据悉，此次地表裂开的洞比四个足球场还大，吞噬了三辆车，破坏了一条水泥公路，还有遇难者的这座房屋。搜救人员挖掘了整整一天，才终于进入了这座只有绿色屋顶还露在外面、其余部分几乎完全被泥土覆盖的房子。消防部门发言人弗朗克斯？格里高尔说：“这个裂缝太大了，灾难降临得太快简直不可想象。”

然而，这座被吞噬的房屋被认定并不在最危险的地带上，所以这次事故让整个村庄都陷入了恐慌。专家介绍，这个区域的地层几乎都是由上个冰川时代较低海岸流域堆积的粘土构成，而粘土非常敏感，一旦被破坏就会失去凝固力度，引起山体坍塌或者地面倾斜。而如果水流破坏了土地结构，或者地面以下的岩石移动，就可能发生地表裂缝。

加拿大自然资源局介绍，类似的粘土层事故在几个世纪中已经造成100多人死亡，其中就包括1908年发生在魁北克省Notre-Dame-de-la-Salette和1971年发生在St-Jean-Vianney的两次大破坏性灾害。


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