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Major landslide at iconic Australian's tourist attraction "inevitable": experts

Xinhua, September 21, 2016 Adjust font size:

A major landslide along Australia's iconic Great Ocean Road, a favor of Chinese tourists, is inevitable, authorities have warned.

Record rainfall in much of Victoria in September caused widespread floods in the state's west, resulting in the death of one elderly farmer and damage to thousands of properties.

Peter Baker, a deputy incident controller for emergency services, said that the deluge caused a series of landslides between Lorne and Apollo Bay, two of the biggest towns along the 243-kilometer national heritage-listed road.

"There are over 100 landslides, some of them are very small, but some of them would be the size of a household garage," Baker told the ABC on Wednesday.

Baker said there was a 40-meter section of road near Wye River, a small town along the Great Ocean Road, that would cause major disruptions when it inevitably fell.

"The geotechnical specialists are saying it's not a matter of if this piece of dirt slides, it's a matter of when it does, so it's imminent that it will happen," he said.

"But what the experts are doing is setting up very sensitive monitoring equipment on it, so that they can actually get instant information with regards to any further movement of this dirt."

Any major landslide along the road would be damaging to the towns which rely heavily on tourism to the Great Ocean Road to survive.

A tourism strategy report released by the Victorian government revealed that 33 percent of China's 530,000 annual visitors to Victoria visit the Great Ocean Road, making it the state's most prominent regional attraction.

Craig Lapsley, Emergency Management Commissioner, said bushfires that ravaged Wye River on Christmas Day 2015 made the area more susceptible to landslides.

"In the fire area ... we haven't got buildings there anymore, the debris has been removed, we've got trees that have been cut down because they were damaged by fire," Lapsley said at a press conference on Sunday.

"Now we've got water saturated in the ground and potentially the land will slide."

Engineers are working to install concrete barriers along the road, bringing it back to one lane, to act as a catch barrier for debris when the landslide occurs. Endit