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.

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 …

Reuters image of the search for victims Reuters is now reporting that the number of fatalities in the China tailings dam disaster (landslide / debris flow) is now 128 people. A unknown number remain buried in the debris. Interestingly, Xinhua appears to have ceased reporting on the event (corrected: they do now have a report), amongst suggestions that journalists are being kept away. The difficulties facing the rescuers are clear …

Today marks the 15th anniversary of my first post to the Landslide Blog – I have made 2,470 posts so far, with many more to come.

Shuiliandong: a paper in the journal Landslides (Ma et al, 2022) highlights an example of a landslide triggered by underground coal mining

I have been pondering the number of large landslide disasters that occurred in the 1960s. This is an initial list that includes the landslide impacts of two of the greatest earthquakes in history and a series of landslides caused by dams and mining.

Always fly with the window blinds up: images of the large 25 May 2014 West Salt Creek landslide in Colorado, USA

The 8 January 2022 Pau Branco landslide in mine waste – CCTV footage has now emerged showing the overtopping of the dam

Flow from the mining landslide at Pau Branco The mining landslide at Pau Branco caused a significant release of mine waste, which appears to have flowed into the water retention structure below.  This image, from the Observatório da Mineração, shows the flow path:- . As the image shows, the landslide overtopped the retaining structure, which remained essentially intact (note the superficial erosion on either side of the dam abutments).  The …

On 8 January 2022 a significant landslide occurred at the Pau Branco iron ore mine in Brazil, operated by the French company Vallourec.