{"id":19495,"date":"2016-08-15T21:23:02","date_gmt":"2016-08-15T21:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=19495"},"modified":"2016-08-15T21:50:31","modified_gmt":"2016-08-15T21:50:31","slug":"luoyang-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2016\/08\/15\/luoyang-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Luoyang, Henan province: first reports of a major tailings dam failure in China"},"content":{"rendered":"
Luoyang, Henan province: first reports of a major tailings dam failure in China<\/h5>\n

Over the weekend reports started to surface from China about the potential for a major tailings dam failure at the Xiangjiang Wanji Aluminium plant in Luoyang, Henan Province in China.\u00a0 Aluminium Insider reported on 11th August<\/a> as follows:<\/p>\n

\n

The People\u2019s Republic of China\u2019s Henan Xiangjiang Wanji Aluminum Co., Ltd. has shut down its alumina refinery in Wanji on account of the potential of a dangerous red mud landslide. According to CRU, the timetable for reopening the facility is not known at this time.\u00a0 A source from within the country indicates that the southwest corner of its red-mud dam body is unsound, threatening a red-mud slide. The Xinan town government, which oversees the town within which the refinery is located, received a report of same and dispatched a working group to the area shortly thereafter. The government required the refinery to cease discharging red mud at once for safety reasons. At the time of the report, over three hundred residents had been evacuated to a safe location, and ten dozen police officers have been stationed nearby.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As far as I can tell there has been no official confirmation of this story.\u00a0 However, the AZ China Blog<\/a> has now reported that the dam has indeed failed:<\/p>\n

Around 7pm on 8th<\/sup> of August, Xiangjiang Wanji Aluminium\u2019s red mud storage\u00a0had a landslide accident. Xiangjiang Wanji Aluminium is a private alumina refinery … The red mud storage which had the accident is located in Dahegou Village, in Luoyang, Henan province.\u00a0 According to local newspaper reports, the dam wall\u00a0suddenly broke and silt mixed with stones from the mountainside\u00a0rushed down, and the village was totally submerged. \u00a0This village is home to\u00a0around 300 villagers and they were transferred in an emergency evacuation. \u00a0No one was killed or injured. \u00a0The villagers\u00a0are living in a primary school in Xinan County temporarily. \u00a0Sadly, the red mud buried many farm and domestic animals because it was too late to save\u00a0them.\u00a0 It has been reported that the dam held about 2 million cubic meters of red mud and was about 1.5 km in length.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Most importantly, they have posted an image of the tailings landslide:<\/p>\n

\"Luoyang

The Luoyang tailings landslide in China via AZ China<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

This Google Earth image, dated from Frebruary this year, is the reported site of the tailings dam failure:<\/p>\n

\"Luoyang

Google earth image of the site of the reported tailing dam failure at Luoyang<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

I don’t think that there is any doubt that the houses on the Google Earth image are the same as the ones in the image of the tailings landslide:<\/p>\n

\"Luoyang

Google Earth image of the downstream area affected by the Luoyang tailings dam failure site<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

I think, therefore, that it is clear that a major tailings dam failure has occurred at this site.\u00a0 This is yet another disaster for the mining industry in China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reports and images are emerging from China that show a major tailings dam failure at the Henan Xiangjiang Wanji works at Luoyang in Henan Province<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":19499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[16,71,881,469,299,205,230],"class_list":["post-19495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-china","tag-dam","tag-east-asia","tag-featured","tag-mine","tag-mining","tag-tailings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19495","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=19495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}