ABSTRACT
A great earthquake of magnitude 8 in Richter scale occurred in Sichuan on 12 may 2008. The strikeslip rupturing started near Yingxiu and developed towards the northeast along the Yingxiu-BeichuanQingchuan fault zone. The rupture zone was approximately 300 km long (Fig. 1, Chen 2008). The epicenter depth was between 10-20 km. Latest investigations (Huang 2008; Xie et al. 2008) show that approximately 15,000 landslides were triggered during the earthquake. The earthquake caused a casualty of approximately 80,000, of these 19,065 were students. One quarter of the total casualty was caused by earthquake-induced landslides.
