How to survive a landslide

Various news reports suggest that a couple in Alaska had a very lucky escape from a landslide on Sunday.  The best news report that I have come across is on Alaska Public Media, which also has this image of the landslide (credited to Kevin Knox):

Alaska Public Radio / Kevin Knox

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Landslide hazards in the aftermath of the Lushan earthquake in Sichuan

A number of Chinese media outlets have articles about the threats posed by landslides in the aftermath of the 20th May 2013 Lushan earthquake in Sichuan Province.  It is clear from the imagery (such as the image below) that landslides have represented a very significant component of the costs of this earthquake, although at present it is not clear just how many of the deaths were caused by mass movements.  The next major threat is the upcoming rainy season - just weeks away - which will inevitably cause a combination of further first time failures and debris flows of released materials. Ya'an, the County in which Lushan sits, is nicknamed "the city of rain".

http://english.cntv.cn/20130422/102663_2.shtml

 

 

 

 

 

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More information on the disastrous mining-induced landslide in Tibet a fortnight ago

Questions continue to be asked about what I have been calling the Jiama/Gyama Mine landslide in Tibet.  First, it should be noted that this is a misnomer - the event should correctly be called the Tseri Mountain landslide I think, so from here-on in this will be how I refer to it.  Anyway, I thought I'd highlight three sources of information about the landslide that are all very helpful.  Note that all have been compiled independently from my own analysis
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1. An interpretative report about the landslide by Adrian Moon
Adrian Moon, who regularly contributes this blog, has written an analysis of the landslide.  This is a very impressive piece of work.  He has given me permission to make it available, so I have uploaded it onto Slideshare and have embedded it below.  You should be able to read it below, but if not click here.  Adrian also asked me to acknowledge the input of his colleagues Robert Barnett, Professor of Contemporary Tibetan Studies, Columbia University and Yeshi Dorje at the Voice of America Tibetan Service.

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Is the Bingham Canyon copper mine landslide the most expensive single mass movement in history?

Further news is emerging about the landslide at Bingham Canyon copper mine last week.  The transparency of all involved is impressive to behold, and is a remarkable contrast to the much more costly in human terms landslide at the Jiama mine in Tibet.  I thoroughly recommend that you visit the Kennecott Utah Copper flickr site, which has some wonderful images of the landslide.  I cannot post them here, but do take a look.

In landslide terms this event was a major success, with one substantial caveat, in that detailed monitoring allowed the event to be predicted, which meant that the mining operations were stopped and the mine was evacuated prior to the event.  The mine was using slope deformation radar systems provided by the Italian Company IDS, which can detect movement in the walls of the mine.  Interpretation of the movement patterns can be used to forecast and even predict a failure event - indeed this is an area that our research group at Durham has worked upon in some depth.  The caveat of course is that the size and travel distance of the landslide does not seem to have been anticipated.  Indeed Rio Tinto released a market report that said:

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The unusually large Bingham Canyon Mine landslide - an impressive example of prediction using monitoring

On Wednesday evening an extremely large - and in the case this is no exaggeration - landslide occurred in the Bingham Canyon copper mine in Utah, USA.  According to various news reports, the deforming slope was identified some months ago and monitored intensively.  An increasing rate of strain in the hours before failure indicated that a collapse was imminent, and the mining company released a warning about the landslide in advance.  The upshot is that although it has caused considerable damage to the mine, there are no casualties.

The scale is impressive.  There is a fabulous gallery of images of the landslide on the ksl.com website.  These are two of them:

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Landslides in Portugal, including a new landslide video

Portugal News reports that heavy rainfall in the last few days across the country has induced landslides and floods, with  the district of Santarem being worst hit.  The most interesting landslide occurred at Guimarães, where the ring road was severed by a landslide.  On Youtube there is a dramatic video that shows the early stages of this failure but not the main landslide event.  There are some very good images of the aftermath at the end of the video.  It is worth watching:

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Caveat Emptor part 2 - the end game

Back in October I highlighted the case of a house in Torquay in Devon that was being affected by landslides.  This is rather a sad story in many ways - the house was bought for a knock-down, but not insubstantial, price, apparently unseen, before the most recent problems began.  The buyer has now suffered very high levels of loss as the house has been destroyed.  The Daily Mail yesterday ran a photo story about the house, which has subsequently suffered a series of landslide events.  The result is that it is possible to put together a sequence of photos of the loss of the house:

The house in question (from the Daily Mail):

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More information about the Brazil riverbank failure landslide

The Brazil riverbank landslide, which killed six people last week, is an intriguing event.  In the comments from my post yesterday, Raphael Rocha kindly provided detailed information about the landslide (including a correction to the location).  This certainly justifies a separate post
One of the links that he provided was to this site, which has an image of the area of land that collapsed:

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The strange case of the sinking pontoon in Brazil

Over the weekend there has been a number of news stories about a peculiar event in Brazil on Thursday night. This news story from the BBC is typical:

A mining company in Brazil says an inquiry has begun into the cause of the collapse and sinking of a floating port on the Amazon river, in Amapa state.  Rescue operations are under way to locate six workers who went missing.  An official blamed a big wave that allegedly washed over the banks of the Amazon, dragging with it cranes, lorries and people ... "There was a wave that washed over the banks of Santana, even reaching the island of Santana. This wave also hit the company's port," Paulo Oliveira, a spokesman for Anglo Ferrous told the local channel TV Amapa. Other witnesses, however, told reporters that the quick and powerful water surge was a consequence of the landslide and the sinking of the floating port facilities, which were used for loading ships with iron ore.
In a statement, Anglo-American said the causes of the collapse were being investigated. "An iron ore vessel was docked at the pier for loading at the time and was hit by flood waters. Flood waters also dragged vehicles and shipping equipment into the river," the company said. Authorities avoided pointing fingers before the experts complete their tasks. "Right now, it would be inappropriate to try and find a culprit, but after a detailed survey, we will get to understand the causes and be able to attribute responsibilities," the state governor of Amapa, Camilo Capiberibe, said.

The same report also has this image of the site:

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News of the Tibet gold mine landslide

First, many thanks to Adrian Moon for his help in putting together this post.
Xinhua has continued to run various stories about the catastrophic landslide at a gold mine in Medrogungkar, Tibet yesterday.  The sad headline news is that no survivors have been recovered, despite the attention of a large number of rescuers.  Xinhua has also released two tranches of images of the site (here and here), most of which focus on the rescuers in heroic poses.  However, a small number give a better idea of the scale of this event, of which this is by far the best:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/photo/2013-03/30/c_132273063_3.htm

Assuming that the source of the landslide is the apparently fresh material on the slope on the right side of the image, this is clearly a very long run out landslide.  The fresh material in the valley is undoubtedly the landslide deposit - it appears that this was a highly energetic, rapid, flow-type event.  It would be really interesting to see an image of the source area, but even from this image it is clear that this is not a typical quarry landslide. The enormous scale of the landslide is shown in this Sky News video:

The most likely location of the landslide, although this is not confirmed, 29.681 degrees E, 91.904 degrees North.  This is the Jiama mine (which elsewhere is sometimes called the Jiama Copper Mine). If so, there is more information about the mine here.  Certainly the satellite image from Google Earth is consistent with the images from Xinhua:

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A Google Earth perspective view demonstrates how a very large-scale slope failure could become channelised in this very narrow, steep valley:



In such a large landslide recovering the victims is a monumental task.  Further updates will be posted on the AGU home of this blog here.