The Chinese media are reporting another tailings dam failure, this time in Hunan province. Fortunately, the effects appear to be far less devastating than this event last year. The reports suggest that a manganese ore tailings dam failed in Huayuan County, Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture in Hunan Province early on Thursday morning, releasing a flowslide that hit a house, killing three people and injuring four more.

Driving home from work last night, and bored with listening to endless discussions on the radio about the ways in which politicians use the system to personal gain, I started pondering what we have learnt from the Wenchuan Earthquake a year ago. The media yesterday understandably focused on collapsed schools. We have known for years that critical buildings in earthquake zones need seismic reinforcement, so this is hardly new. These …

I am just going to write up one session from today’s meeting as it contained the most interesting talks that I heard. This was an annual session on landslides induced by volcanoes and earthquakes, the first three talks of which focussed on the Wenchuan event. Regular readers will know that I am very interested indeed in this event (see here for example). So first up was Ed Harp and two …

Updated to include the afternoon sessionsThis week is the annual European Geosciences Union assembly in Vienna. This is the biggest annual landslide meeting – there are >300 landslide related papers this time around – and since I am the scientific secretary for the landslide session I cannot allow the opportunity to comment on what I see to pass. So here are my thoughts on Day 1. My intention is not …

One of the great concerns about the Three Gorges Dam in China has always been the potential for large-scale landslides. As the project nears completion, inevitably very over-budget, the level of the lake is rising and the cost of these landslides in becoming apparent. Today AFP and Xinhua have runs stories that raise concerns still further. These stories report that since September there have been 166 landslide and debris flow …

Each year in mid-April we move into the global “landslide season”, when the development of the Northern Hemisphere summer, and the associated weather patterns elsewhere, means that the number of landslides starts to increase dramatically. This is all too clear from the range of landslide events in the last few days, plus the threat of heavy rainfall in the earthquake affected areas of China: 1. Major landslide in PeruA range …

This is the fourth part of my photographic description of damage caused by the Sichuan earthquake. The other parts are as follows: Part 1: Beichuan townPart 2: The Tangjiashan landslidePart 3: Hanwang townPart 4 (this part): The Mianyuanhe areaPart 5: The Xingyiu area First a location map. The Mianyuanhe area is a fairly large river valley that cuts through the Longmen mountain chain, with its mouth as Hanwang as shown …

This is the third of my five sets of images of the impact of the Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan, China. The first two are as follows:Part 1: Beichuan town Part 2: The Tangjiashan landslide Part 3 (this part): Hanwang townPart 4: The Mianyuanhe areaPart 5: The Xingyiu area In this set of images I feature the town of Hanwang, on the edge of the mountains. The location of Hanwang is …

This is the first of my series of photographic reviews of the earthquake affected area in Sichuan Province. The other sets are as follows:Part 1 (this part): Beichuan town Part 2: The Tangjiashan landslide Part 3: Hanwang town Part 4: The Mianyuanhe area Part 5: The Xingyiu area Thanks to my friends in the State Key Laboratory for Geohazards at the Chengdu University of Technology I have spent the last …

Image of the Merriespruit Tailings Dam failure in South Africa (image from Tailings.org) In the last year I have twice posted extensively about particular tailings dams failures and the resulting flowslides. The events in question were the 8th September 2008 Taoshi failure in Shaanxi, China and the 22nd December 2008 Tennessee Valley Authority failure in at the Kingston fossil plant in Harriman, Tennessee, USA. The WISE Uranium project has some …