12 February 2011
Two public lectures in Australia and an amazing open pit landslide in Turkey
Posted by dr-dave
Public lectures
Just a brief heads-up to anyone in Adelaide, Australia this week. I will be giving two public lectures as follows:
Coastal cliff erosion – Monday, 14 February, 3.30 pm – 4.30 pm, at the University of Adelaide, Chapman Lecture Theatre (North Terrace Campus). Hosted by the University of Adelaide.
Impact of landslides triggered by earthquakes – Wednesday, 16 February, 6.00pm-8.00pm, at Level 11, 108 King William Street. Hosted by Engineers Australia. You need to book for this one: see advert here.
I promise to mention the Ashes cricket only once in each talk…
An open pit landslide in Turkey
There was a very dramatic, large landslide in an open pit coal mine in Kahramanmaraş Province of Turkey on Thursday morning, which has left one miner dead and a further nine missing. The slide, which has been erroneously reported as an explosion in some quarters, occurred in the Çöllolar coalfield near the Afşin-Elbistan power plant. Some of the media have images of what appears to be a very large failure – this report suggests that it may be 50 million cubic metres!
The most revealing image I have found to date is this one, from here:
Anadolu Agency also has an image pair that starts to hint at the possible scale of the event:
This is a very large pit. I believe that this image shows the mine (from Bizim Elbistan):
Has anyone seen an aerial image of the landslide?
Dave Petley is the Wilson Professor of Hazard and Risk in the Department of Geography at Durham University in the United Kingdom. His blog provides a commentary on landslide events occurring worldwide, including the landslides themselves, latest research, and conferences and meetings.
Christian Nittinger said on 12 February 2011
You can see something more in this video: http://video.milliyet.com.tr/Afsinde-gocuk-1-olu-5-yarali_1_47731.htm
Christian N said on 12 February 2011
I think at 20 seconds of the video you can see the car from your first image.
Caner Zanbak said on 20 February 2011
At this time, I can not get into the geotechnical details of the slope failures at the recent Collolar (Choellolaar, as pronounced) Open Pit Coal Mine in Turkey due to lack of reliable geotechnical and pit layout data in my hand and also that it would not appropriate to interfere with the on-going administrative investigations. However, based on the press coverage and available photos on internet, there were two slope failures on opposite sidewalls of the pit. Second failure is the larger one occured four days after the first one and involves in about 40-50 million tons of material. A good set of photos can be seen at: http://www.elbistaninsesi.com/image_gallery_detail.php?id=22
(pre-failure); http://www.elbistaninsesi.com/image_gallery_detail.php?id=21 (post-1st Failure) and at http://www.elbistaninsesi.com/image_gallery_detail.php?id=20 (post-2nd Failure). If you look at the first photo in the “post-2nd failure sets, the right side of the photo is the first failure and the 2nd failure (larger one) is on the left side. Again, I will inform the followers of your blog-site later when dust clears a little bit more on this case. The MSc thesis mentioned earlier is mainly on the stability of short-term production benches; whereas the failure mechanism of the slides are more complicated than simple circular or planar/wedge failures; I would say, base heave due to fast-track operations and time dependent shear strength parameters deterioration of the clay seams along with pore pressure build-ups have played “some” roles in this case. I’ll keep you posted in due time.
Caner Zanbak
Einar Bjorgo said on 1 March 2011
Satellite imagery analysis of landslide in Turkey