12 February 2011

Two public lectures in Australia and an amazing open pit landslide in Turkey

Posted by Dave Petley

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?