{"id":35662,"date":"2020-12-02T07:21:44","date_gmt":"2020-12-02T07:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=35662"},"modified":"2020-12-02T07:21:44","modified_gmt":"2020-12-02T07:21:44","slug":"gramsberg-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2020\/12\/02\/gramsberg-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Gamsberg mine in South Africa: when is a landslide a geotechnical failure?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gamsberg mine in South Africa: when is a landslide a geotechnical failure?<\/h4>\n

Gamsberg mine is a comparatively new open cast pit in the Northern Cape, South Africa<\/a>. Operated by Vedanta Zinc International<\/a>, it currently produces 400,000 tonnes of ore per month. Once full production capacity is reached Gamsberg is expected to produce 4 000,000 tonnes of ore and 250,000 tonnes of zinc-in-concentrate per year. The current reserve and resource is 214 million tonnes, and operations are estimated to last about 30 years.<\/p>\n

On 17 November at about 1:15 am\u00a0 Gamsberg suffered what its owners are describing as a “geotechnical failure” that was sufficiently large to require that the company release a formal statement<\/a>. The failure occurred in a high wall excavation known at a part of the mine known as the South Pit.\u00a0 At the time of the failure there were ten members of staff at the bottom of the pit.\u00a0 Eight were rescued, but it appears that the other two were killed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The failure is sufficiently large that it is clearly visible on the daily Planet Labs<\/a> imagery.\u00a0 The images below show the South Pit; the left image was captured on 14 November, before the landslide, and the image on the right was captured after the event on 17 November.<\/p>\n

\"Gamsberg

Planet Labs<\/a> imagery showing the Gamsberg mine before the failure (left, collected on 14 November 2020) and after (right, collected on 17 November 2020). Images courtesy of Planet Labs<\/a>,used with permission. Copyright Planet Labs<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Images of the landslide at Gamsberg mine have also been posted to Reddit<\/a>.\u00a0 This image provides an overview of the landslide itself:-<\/p>\n

\"The

An overview of the landslide at Gamsberg mine. Image posted anomalously to Reddit<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Whilst this image shows the damage caused by the landslide:-<\/p>\n

\"The

The damage caused by the landslide at Gamsberg mine. Image posted anomalously to Reddit<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

There is very little additional information about this very large mining landslide.\u00a0 The impact on the workers in the mine and to the equipment above suggests that it might not have been anticipated.\u00a0 As high wall mines often have sophisticated monitoring of their slopes, it is increasingly unusual for the operators to be taken by surprise by such events.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

Reference and acknowledgement<\/h4>\n

Planet Team (2020). Planet Application Program Interface: In Space for Life on Earth. San Francisco, CA. https:\/\/www.planet.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 17 November 2020 a major landslide occurred on a high wall at the Gamsberg mine in South Africa, killing two workers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27393],"tags":[469,299,205,1205,114],"class_list":["post-35662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mining","tag-featured","tag-mine","tag-mining","tag-planet-labs","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35662","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=35662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}