{"id":22317,"date":"2017-03-17T09:40:47","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T09:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=22317"},"modified":"2017-03-17T09:42:11","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T09:42:11","slug":"koshe-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2017\/03\/17\/koshe-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Koshe, Ethiopia: the worst garbage dump landslide in recent years"},"content":{"rendered":"
Koshe, Ethiopia: the worst garbage dump landslide in recent years<\/h5>\n

The death toll from the terrible garbage dump landslide at Koshe in Ethiopia on Saturday is now known to have reached 115<\/a>, with fears that more bodies may remain buried.\u00a0 The landslide occurred on Saturday when a section of the dump collapsed onto a slum built at the toe of the slope.\u00a0 The majority of fatalities are reported to be women and children.\u00a0 The most-informative set of images can be found in this CBS News article<\/a> from a few days ago, including the image below of the crown of the landslide, which suggests that the crown of the landslide has a rotational component:-<\/p>\n

\"Koshe\"

The crown of the Koshe landslide in Ethiopia, via CBS News and ZACHARIAS ABUBEKER\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

From this image the landslide looks to be a comparatively simple failure in an oversteepened slope.\u00a0 The image below, also via CBS News<\/a>, shows the rescue operations further down the slope, which indicates that the lower reaches of the landslide may have behaved as an earthflow.\u00a0 Again, this is not unexpected:<\/p>\n

\"Koshe\"

The lower reaches of the Koshe garbage dumpl landslide, via CBS News and REUTERS\/Tiksa Negeri TPX Images of the Day<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Africa Review has a good article<\/a> on the possible causes of the landslide:<\/p>\n

The people of Koshe lived in squalor of a degree that is uncommon in the city of four million people.\u00a0 Last year, the government tried to close the landfill and move it to a new location, but opposition from people living near the new site forced authorities to reverse their decision.<\/p>\n

Addis Ababa’s construction boom didn’t leave Koshe untouched; a biogas plant is being built on top of the rubbish dump.\u00a0 Koshe residents who spoke to AFP blamed the landslide on the facility’s construction.\u00a0 They said bulldozers that packed down soil to make way for the new plant destabilised the hillside.<\/p>\n

[Communications Minister Negeri Lencho] said he could not comment on the cause of tragedy, saying an investigation was under way.\u00a0 He had earlier said slum dwellers may have inadvertently caused the disaster.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Being buried in a garbage dump landslide is truly terrible.\u00a0 The survival rate is particularly low given the nature of the material and the potential for the waste to generate methane that can fill any spaces within the mass.\u00a0 Back in 2008 I wrote a blog post<\/a> about the impact of garbage landslides, and our comparatively poor understanding thereof.\u00a0 In 2011 I posted about a terrible garbage landslide<\/a> at Irisan in Baguio, Philippines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Saturday 11th March a landslide at the Koshe garbage dump in Addis Ababa killed at least 115 people, most of them women and children<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":22339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[85,1112,469,2799,959,861],"class_list":["post-22317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-africa","tag-ethiopia","tag-featured","tag-gargabe","tag-landslide-report","tag-waste"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22317","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=22317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}