{"id":6157,"date":"2013-03-29T17:20:08","date_gmt":"2013-03-29T17:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=6157"},"modified":"2013-03-29T17:22:04","modified_gmt":"2013-03-29T17:22:04","slug":"first-reports-of-a-massive-landslide-in-tibet-83-people-reported-to-have-been-killed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2013\/03\/29\/first-reports-of-a-massive-landslide-in-tibet-83-people-reported-to-have-been-killed\/","title":{"rendered":"First reports of a massive landslide in Tibet &#8211; 83 people reported to have been killed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.xinhuanet.com\/english\/china\/2013-03\/29\/c_124522149.htm\">Xinhua is reporting<\/a> that a landslide occurred at 6 am local time at a gold mine in <span id=\"Zoom\">Maizhokunggar County<\/span>, which is in Chinese-controlled Tibet.\u00a0 The landslide is reported to be very large &#8211; some reports say 4 square kilometres, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.xinhuanet.com\/english\/china\/2013-03\/29\/c_124522149.htm\">whilst a slightly more credible report<\/a> suggests that the deposit is\u00a0<span id=\"Zoom\">2 km in length and 50 metres wide<\/span>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/hostednews\/ap\/article\/ALeqM5iaNAEhjQ2GiwoGmnEGb199p5CQyg?docId=b3c7c118a341484cb131b6a49c3adea1\">with a volume of 2 million cubic metres<\/a>.\u00a0 Unfortunately the landslide appears to have buried a set of workers&#8217; huts, with 83 people reported missing.\u00a0 The likelihood of them surviving such an event is extremely low.<\/p>\n<p>There are images in some of the news reports (e.g. <a href=\"http:\/\/au.news.yahoo.com\/world\/a\/-\/world\/16475722\/landslide-buries-83-in-tibet-mine-area-state-media\/\">here<\/a>), but it is far from clear to me that these actually depict the incident in question.\u00a0 Some look far too small.\u00a0 Images are likely to appear in the next 24 hours though.<\/p>\n<p>This event is sufficiently large to have <a href=\"http:\/\/news.xinhuanet.com\/english\/china\/2013-03\/29\/c_124522172.htm\">attracted the attention of the new Chinese Premier and President<\/a>, who have urged both a rapid rescue effort and a full investigation of what went wrong.<\/p>\n<p>The Chinese mining industry has a wretched track record when it come to landslides, as many posts on this blog (e.g.<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2013\/02\/21\/two-more-coal-mine-landslides-both-fatal-including-a-rockfall-video\/\"> here<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2012\/08\/01\/28-killed-in-another-mining-landslide-in-china\/\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2011\/07\/29\/china-has-suffered-another-tailings-dam-failure\/\">here<\/a> and<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2009\/12\/13\/poor-mining-management-was-the-cause-of-the-sigou-village-landslide-in-china\/\"> here<\/a>) testify.\u00a0 Mining is dangerous everywhere, but in China the levels of loss are truly terrifying.<\/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>Xinhua is reporting that a landslide occurred at a gold mine in Tibet early this morning.  In total 83 workers at the mine are reported to have been killed<!-- 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":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[16,959,205],"class_list":["post-6157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-china","tag-landslide-report","tag-mining"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6157","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=6157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}