Mudslides (like the tragic one in the Phillipines), it turns out, are the 7th most common natural disaster. Even in more developed areas, they're tricky to plan for because they have particularly chaotic risk assessment factors. Devastating but unpredictable, they'd never show up as a key immediate threat in standard emergency management risk assessments.
Which is, by the the by, immensely frightening if you dwell on, near, or--conceivably--in mud.
The key point for me is the global increase in these sorts of events due to deforestation and modern agricultural methods in the developing worlds. So far, while our risk models have only taken into account the direct results of these processes, nature seems to be increasing risk exponentially upon them.
That is, it ain't just the effects of deforestation that are the problem. The deforestation causes mudslides causes loss of usable land and infrastructure. This kind of value-added destruction may well increase the casualty rates we see from global development.
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