Author(s)

D. Emmanouloudis & M. Kaikis

Abstract

On 17 November 1992, after a brief (t<30 min) but very heavy rainfall, the small torrents (four in all) flowing across the community of Eleftheres, Kavala, Northern Greece, flooded and caused extensive and intense flood disasters. It should be stressed that a few months earlier (August 1992), a ravaging fire had totally deforested the area of the drainage basins of the above torrents. The largest torrent, with a surface area of only 0.91 km 2 , formed a huge debris flow which moved in waves downwards, at first in the bed and then out of it, flooding the village of Eleftheres and, sweeping everything away, it demolished houses and almost buried the village in mud. As a result of this activity, three people were killed, dozens of others were injured and all the local activities were suspended for a period of several months. The torrent in question had never before operated as a debris flow torrent, nor had any landslides or similar geological phenomena causing debris flow occurred in its basin. The present paper studies the causes and the mechanism of the formation of debris flow of peculiar origin in this particular torrent and attempts to provide an interpretation of the phenomenon of the formation of debris flow in a torrent bed without an obvious cause, such as pre-flood feeding of the bed. Keywords: deforestation, fatal flood, debris flow. 1 Introduction Debris flow is a very important and famous geological phenomenon. Many researchers all over the world have studied the debris flow dynamics and process

Keywords

deforestation, fatal flood, debris flow.