{"id":16982,"date":"2015-11-24T06:26:58","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T06:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=16982"},"modified":"2015-11-24T00:03:41","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T00:03:41","slug":"burma-jade-mine-landslide-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2015\/11\/24\/burma-jade-mine-landslide-1\/","title":{"rendered":"The Burma jade mine landslide disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5>The Burma jade mine landslide disaster<\/h5>\n<p>News from within Burma about the jade mine landslide disaster is hard to find, so inevitably I have to rely on external reports.\u00a0 The <a href=\"http:\/\/news.xinhuanet.com\/english\/2015-11\/23\/c_134846336.htm\">Chinese news agency Xinhua reports<\/a> that to date 113 bodies have been recovered, and there is a lack of clarity about how many more people may have died.\u00a0 The landslide struck an informal settlement, so little information is available.\u00a0 However, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mmtimes.com\/index.php\/national-news\/17771-rescuers-lose-hope-of-finding-survivors-from-jade-mine-landslide.html\">Myanmar Times<\/a> suggests that it is likely to be in the order of 200 people,<\/p>\n<p>The best image I have seen of the landslide is this one, from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.news-eleven.com\/\">Eleven Media Group<\/a> \/ AP:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_16985\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2015\/11\/15_11-Myanmar-1-e1448321869637.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-16985\" class=\"wp-image-16985 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2015\/11\/15_11-Myanmar-1-e1448321869637.jpg\" alt=\"Burma jade mine landslide\" width=\"640\" height=\"371\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-16985\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Burma jade mine landslide, courtesy of Eleven Media Group, (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.news-eleven.com\/\">Eleven Media Group<\/a> via AP)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>The image appears to show a classic mining flowslide, originating from a spoil heap.\u00a0 Note the figures in the lower part of the landslide in a small track, which give an idea of the scale of the Burma jade mine landslide.\u00a0 The slide itself has in interesting structure, with very strong levee structures on both sides.\u00a0 Note also a small number of houses on the right side of the landslide &#8211; this may give an indication as to the location of the settlement before the landslide.\u00a0 There can be essentially no prospect of survivors.<\/p>\n<p>Landslides of this type should be entirely avoidable &#8211; the potential for the failure of spoil tips has been known for half a decade, and in countries with good mine management the occurrence is now very low.\u00a0 That there are these repeated mining landslides in the jade mine area of Kachin State indicates poor mining practices.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=u5Z8bWi5y-M\">Youtube has some mobile phone footage<\/a> of the attempts to recover the victims:-<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/u5Z8bWi5y-M?rel=0\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>Whilst mining practices by illegal miners are undoubtedly very dangerous, this landslide is unlikely to have been triggered by such small scale activity.\u00a0 The other spoil tips on the photograph above have similar geometries to the one that failed.\u00a0 These need urgent attention.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Burma jade mine landslide disaster on Friday was a massive flowslide that is now known to have killed over 110 people. The final toll may be about 200 people, most of them poor miners living in an unofficial settlement.<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":16985,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[302,14,299,205,301,314,1033],"class_list":["post-16982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-burma","tag-flowslide","tag-mine","tag-mining","tag-myanmar","tag-se-asia","tag-spoil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}