Environment Minister: reports show 2023 Shovi resort, 2024 Nergeeti landslides caused by climate change
Georgian Environment Minister Otar Shamugia on Friday said the two major landslides in the west of the country had been caused by climate change. Photo: Ministry of Environmental Protection
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Georgian Environment Minister Otar Shamugia on Friday said the two major landslides in the west of the country, which hit the Shovi resort last year and the village of Nergeeti earlier this month had been caused by climate change, in comments while presenting the National Environment Agency’s concluding report on the subject.
The reports come after controversies in the public on the origins of the landslides and whether state agencies had failed to foresee them, with the 2023 landslide killing at least 29 people and the February natural disaster taking the lives of nine.
Shamugia said the Agency had dispatched six teams of geologists and hydrologists to Shovi resort to study the situation and prepare the report, while also signing an agreement with the Swiss company Geotesti to study the collected evidence.
The Swiss specialists confirmed a sliding of land masses and no water swelling in the Bubistskali gorge, and the duration of the land mass movement, which was measured at 7.5-10 minutes. Based on the conclusion, climate change caused the disaster”, the Minister said.
He added the Swiss experts had recommended development of new traffic rules and installation of warning signs in Bubistskali gorge and Shovi resort. He added carrying out “capital protection measures” for “processes of this scale” was “impossible”, and added the invited professionals had recommended development of a “spacious planning for the territory.
As for the landslide in Nergeeti village, Shamugia said snow melting and heavy rains had triggered the landslide processes.
In three days, 46 percent of the normal monthly rainfall arrived, which is a very high indicator for this period of time. The landslide completely destroyed four residential houses and there were human casualties”, he said, adding the geologists dispatched to the disaster site had recommended resettlement of seven families.
In related comment,s the Minister said 245 hydro meteorological stations would operate across Georgia by late 2024 through an increased budget of ₾13 million ($4.90mln) to the Agency.
Shamugia added monitoring was continuing at 18 landslide active zones, and the number of monitored territories would increase to 29 by late 2024.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia on Thursday said rescuers had recovered all bodies of victims in the western municipality of Baghdati in the Imereti region after a landslide that hit the village of Nergeeti on Tuesday.
The rescuers recovered the bodies of two more individuals in the western municipality of Baghdati in the Imereti region after a landslide that hit the village of Nergeeti on Tuesday, the Interior Ministry confirmed to the local media.
Teimuraz Mgebrishvili, the head of the Emergency Management Service of Georgia, on Thursday said the Government had used “all resources available” and ensured “far more than reasonable effort” to respond to the landslide in the country’s western Shovi resort last week that killed 21 people.
The landslide in the western Georgian municipality of Oni that killed at least 18 people in the Shovi resort on August 3 was caused by intense melting of glaciers, collapse of rock formations in their headwaters, heavy rains, erosive processes and a glacier runoff, a preliminary report by the National Environmental Agency said on Monday.
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze on Friday said a reconstruction of western Georgia’s Shovi resort, which was hit by a deadly landslide in August, was “not recommended”, and added state authorities would hold consultations to establish compensations for those who had held land or infrastructure in ownership in the locality.