19 November 2018

Two interesting roadside failure videos from India and Nepal

Posted by Dave Petley

Two interesting roadside failure videos from India and Nepal

Two videos have been posted to Youtube showing dramatic and interesting roadside failure events. The first appears to be from Nepal, some reports suggest the location was Lalitpur, and the caption indicates that it was associated with “stone mining”, although the failure itself appears to be on a haul road:-

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The main collapse event occurs at 3:08, and the person holding the camera rotates the image as failure begins:-

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A roadside failure in a quarry in Nepal. Still from a Youtube video posted Fultung by on 16th November 2018.

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An interesting aspect of this landslide is the way that it shows the retrogression of the landslide up the slope:-

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The development of retrogression if a roadside failure in a quarry in Nepal. Still from a Youtube video posted by Fultung on 16th November 2018.

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This appears to be yet another example of poor mining practices inducing instability that was entirely avoidable.  There were substantial risks to the workers in a failure of this type, but fortunately in this case the collapse appears to have been anticipated.  An excavator was reportedly destroyed however.

The second occurred in India, this time on a mountain road:-

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The caption from one version of the video showing this roadside landslide says:-

A group of Indian villagers managed to cheat death after they felt rumbling beneath them and avoided a landslide..In a clip several villagers hold back as they notice a rumble in the ground beneath them, and predict that there is an oncoming landslide. They were travelling along the road in Chamba, Himachal Pradesh, in northern India on Sunday when they narrowly avoided the tumbling cliff side. Their hunch proved right and a portion of the mountain collapsed right before their eyes.The landslide blocked the Chamba-Holi road for nearly a day as local officials battled to clear the debris.

This is a splendid example of a collapse on a joint set that was sub-parallel to the slope.  Undercutting close to the road caused the joints to daylight, allowing failure to develop:-

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The development of a roadside failure in India. Still from a Youtube video.