{"id":39824,"date":"2021-12-22T07:56:48","date_gmt":"2021-12-22T07:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=39824"},"modified":"2021-12-22T07:56:48","modified_gmt":"2021-12-22T07:56:48","slug":"myanmar-jade-landslide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2021\/12\/22\/myanmar-jade-landslide\/","title":{"rendered":"Another fatal jade mine landslide in Myanmar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another fatal jade mine landslide in Myanmar<\/h4>\n

It is reported that yet another landslide affected the Hpakant area of Myanmar this morning.\u00a0 Whilst the picture is a little sketchy at the moment, the indications are that a jade mine landslide occurred at about 4 am.\u00a0 Indications are that between 70 and 100 people were swept into a lake.\u00a0 One body has been recovered and 25 people have been injured.<\/p>\n

WION\/AFP has the only image of the aftermath that I can find at the moment<\/a> – unfortunately it doesn’t tell us a great deal:<\/p>\n

\"The

The aftermath of the jade mine landslide at Hpakant in Myanmar. Image by AFP via WION<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The Guardian reports that Kachin News Group has indicated that at least 20 miners were killed, but other estimates suggest 80 or more people are missing.<\/a><\/p>\n

Over the years I have repeatedly written about the terrible history of jade mine landslides in the Hpkant area of Kachin State.\u00a0 In 2018 I produced a timeline of reported event<\/a>s, whilst last year another landslide killed at least 175 miners at Wai Khar mine at Sate Mu<\/a>.\u00a0 At the weekend there was yet another landslide, with at least six people, and possibly as many as ten people, killed.<\/p>\n

Much has been written about the causes of these dreadful events<\/a>, but this is an area in which the landscape is being pillaged by large scale mining activities.\u00a0 The level of regulation is negligible, and the area is riven with dangerous slopes of both mine waste and bedrock.\u00a0 On top of this, the dire economic conditions in Myanmar have meant that a large number of people scavenge on the waste piles, trying to find jade to sell.\u00a0 They often mine at night, increasing the danger.\u00a0 Very often the collapse of the waste piles bury these people, or sweep them into the flooded pit bottom.\u00a0 Sometimes displacement waves from collapsing waste piles catch the miners by surprise.<\/p>\n

All of this is avoidable with proper regulation, but there is little or no prospect of change in Myanmar.<\/p>\n

It is estimated that 70-90% of the jade produced in the world comes from Myanmar.\u00a0 Jade is a beautiful rock, but please don’t ever buy jade from Myanmar.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are reports this morning of yet another fatal jade mine landslide in Myanmar, with indications of up to 100 deaths <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":39827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27393],"tags":[469,845,959,299,205,301,314],"class_list":["post-39824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mining","tag-featured","tag-jade","tag-landslide-report","tag-mine","tag-mining","tag-myanmar","tag-se-asia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39824","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=39824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}