21 February 2013

Two coal mine landslides – both fatal (including a rockfall video)

Posted by Dave Petley

Whilst the focus of this blog over the last week has been the remarkable Hatfield Stainforth landslide (for info the lack of updates is because the flow of information from the site has now dried up), two other landslides in coal mines in Asia have claimed lives:

1. A mining-related landslide in Guizhou Province

At 11 am on Monday a large rockfall from a steep cliff that was being undermined by a small-scale coal mine in Longchang township, in Kaili city, Guihou Province, China buried five people, including two children.  Whilst the remains of the victims have not been recovered, it is now accepted that all of the victims were killed.  Interestingly, this landslide has been extensively covered in the media in China, which has released very high quality photos of the site.  The best gallery is in the online version of the UK newspaper of the Daily Mail.

http://english.cntv.cn/program/newshour/20130219/104757.shtml

Rescue operations have been hampered by continued rockfall activity – on a very large-scale.  One of these remarkable rockfalls was caught on a video that is now available on Liveleak:

2. A coal mine landslide at Antique in the Philippines

On 13th Feb a landslide occurred in an open-cast coal mine at Semirara in Caluya, Antique in the Philippines.  The landslide and its aftermath are very well-described in this article.  13 people were buried, of whom only three have been recovered alive.  As with the China example, landslides continued to affect the site after the main collapse, one of which was caught by a photographer: