Abstract: It is very important to investigate geological relics landscapes for urban geological work. The Cuihua rock avalanche is a marvellous spectacle of seismic avalanches in China. Based on dynamic discrete element method, the dynamic response and failure process are simulated under a typical natural earthquake loading. The failure process of Cuihua rock avalanche is reproduced with the numerical simulation. The following results are obtained. Firstly, the amplification effect of velocity and acceleration is the reason of earthquake inertia force. The maximum magnification factor reaches 2.0 on the top of slope. Secondly, high speed and long run out are the characteristic of the rock avalanche. The results shown the maximum horizontal velocity reaches up to 44ms-1 and the horizontal movement distance for some rocks reaches 460m at the front of the rock avalanche. Thirdly, the whole failure process include four stages: starting up stage, accelerating stage, decelerating stage and accumulation stage.