Pharkant is an important jade mining area in Burma.\u00a0 The mining is causing environmental destruction on an epic scale, and has been associated with large landslides<\/a> on a number of previous occasions<\/a> in recent years.\u00a0 The landslides appear to be primarily the result of poor mining practices, and in particular of inadequate management of the spoil generated by the mining activity.<\/p>\n Landslides in mine wastes are a major problem.\u00a0 In the UK the issue is best known because of the 1966 Aberfan landslide<\/a>, in which the collapse of a spoil buried a school, with disastrous consequences.\u00a0 More recently, in 2013 a huge mine waste landslide in Tibet caused extensive loss of life<\/a>.\u00a0 There are many, many other examples<\/a>.\u00a0 One of the reasons for the terrible impact of these slides is the phenomenon known as liquefaction, in which apparently solid earth materials can transform into a very weak, fluid mass that can move both rapidly and over long distances.\u00a0 Under certain conditions some types of mine waste can undergo liquefaction, and very often it is the failure to manage (i.e. prevent) this process that causes catastrophic mine-related landslides.<\/p>\n Two videos have appeared on Youtube this week with no fanfare that illustrate this process to a degree that is unprecedented in my opinion.\u00a0 The videos apparently show a liquefaction landslide that occurred at Pharkant on 9th April 2015.\u00a0 The footage appears to have been shot from a mobile phone, and so it is understandably shaky.\u00a0 But I don’t think a mining-induced liquefaction landslide has ever been caught on camera like this.\u00a0 In terms of quality of the footage, the better video is the one that shows the second half of the landslide sequence<\/a>:<\/p>\n .<\/p>\n