{"id":15594,"date":"2015-07-21T07:39:16","date_gmt":"2015-07-21T07:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=15594"},"modified":"2015-07-21T07:39:16","modified_gmt":"2015-07-21T07:39:16","slug":"semirara-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2015\/07\/21\/semirara-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Semirara: an interesting coal mine landslide video"},"content":{"rendered":"
Semirara landslide<\/h5>\n

Last week a landslide occurred in a coalmine on the island of Semirara<\/a> in the Philippines, killing nine miners<\/a>.\u00a0 Semirara is a strange place, as satellite images show:<\/p>\n

\"Semirara\"<\/a>

Google Earth<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

A huge portion of the northern part of the island has been mined out. This is a mine that appears to be very prone to landslides – the image below<\/a> shows an earlier collapse for example:<\/p>\n

\"Semirara\"<\/a>

A photo provided by the Philippines Office of Civil Defense in Region VI shows view of an earlier landslide area at the Panian open pit at the Semirara mining site in Caluya, Antique, on February 14, 2013. Via Rappler<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

There is an excellent gallery of images of the landslide last week on the ABS CBN website<\/a>, from which this image is taken:<\/p>\n

\"Semirara\"<\/a>

The the North Panian mining site. The left upper portion of picture is the area where the landslide occurred, an estimated 374,000 cubic meters of debris. Via ABS CBN<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The ABS CBN report<\/a> suggests that this is a very large landslide – 374,000 cubic metres.\u00a0 The failure appears to be a rotational slip with quite a high level of mobility at the toe.\u00a0 The report also indicates that the slope was being monitored with prisms (i.e. optical surveying), so it is quite surprising that such high levels of loss occurred.\u00a0 I would be very interested to see the data.<\/p>\n

Anyway, there is a video version of the news report on the Youtube website<\/a>.\u00a0 This includes a section of video that I have not seen before – it starts about 20 seconds into the report – that shows an earlier (smaller) landslide in the same mine:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n