{"id":6161,"date":"2013-03-30T09:13:26","date_gmt":"2013-03-30T09:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=6161"},"modified":"2013-03-30T09:19:07","modified_gmt":"2013-03-30T09:19:07","slug":"news-of-the-tibet-gold-mine-landslide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2013\/03\/30\/news-of-the-tibet-gold-mine-landslide\/","title":{"rendered":"News of the Tibet gold mine landslide"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>First, many thanks to Adrian Moon for his help in putting together this post.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.xinhuanet.com\/english\/china\/society.htm\">Xinhua has continued to run various stories<\/a> about the catastrophic landslide at a gold mine in Medrogungkar, Tibet yesterday.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/news.xinhuanet.com\/english\/photo\/2013-03\/30\/c_132273063_3.htm\">The sad headline news<\/a> is that no survivors have been recovered, despite the attention of a large number of rescuers.\u00a0 Xinhua has also released two tranches of images of the site (<a href=\"http:\/\/news.xinhuanet.com\/english\/photo\/2013-03\/30\/c_132273063.htm\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/news.xinhuanet.com\/english\/photo\/2013-03\/30\/c_132272512.htm\">here<\/a>), most of which focus on the rescuers in heroic poses.\u00a0 However, a small number give a better idea of the scale of this event, of which <a href=\"http:\/\/news.xinhuanet.com\/english\/photo\/2013-03\/30\/c_132273063_3.htm\">this<\/a> is by far the best:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6162\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2013\/03\/30\/news-of-the-tibet-gold-mine-landslide\/13_03-tibet-1\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-6162\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6162\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6162\" title=\"13_03 Tibet 1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/03\/13_03-Tibet-1-e1364633058638.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"423\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-6162\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">http:\/\/news.xinhuanet.com\/english\/photo\/2013-03\/30\/c_132273063_3.htm<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Assuming that the source of the landslide is the apparently fresh material on the slope on the right side of the image, this is clearly a very long run out landslide.\u00a0 The fresh material in the valley is undoubtedly the landslide deposit &#8211; it appears that this was a highly energetic, rapid, flow-type event.\u00a0 It would be really interesting to see an image of the source area, but even from this image it is clear that this is not a typical quarry landslide. The enormous scale of the landslide is shown in this Sky News video:<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=9Yf-BpKniqs<\/p>\n<p>The most likely location of the landslide, although this is not confirmed, 29.681 degrees E, 91.904 degrees North.\u00a0 This is the Jiama mine (which elsewhere is sometimes called the Jiama Copper Mine). If so, there is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chinagoldintl.com\/s\/Jiama.asp\">more information about the mine here<\/a>.\u00a0 Certainly the satellite image from Google Earth is consistent with the images from Xinhua:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2013\/03\/30\/news-of-the-tibet-gold-mine-landslide\/13_03-tibet-3\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-6163\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6163\" title=\"13_03 Tibet 3\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/03\/13_03-Tibet-3-e1364634131357.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"439\" \/><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>A Google Earth perspective view demonstrates how a very large-scale slope failure could become channelised in this very narrow, steep valley:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2013\/03\/30\/news-of-the-tibet-gold-mine-landslide\/13_03-tibet-4\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-6164\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6164\" title=\"13_03 Tibet 4\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/03\/13_03-Tibet-4.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"588\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/03\/13_03-Tibet-4.jpg 588w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2013\/03\/13_03-Tibet-4-300x244.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 588px) 100vw, 588px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>In such a large landslide recovering the victims is a monumental task.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/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>New images have been posted on Xinhua of the huge landslide at the Jiama mine in Tibet yesterday.  This is an unusually large quarry landslide; there is little hope for the 83 victims<!-- 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":6162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16,358,959,205,113],"class_list":["post-6161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-china","tag-gold","tag-landslide-report","tag-mining","tag-tibet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6161","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=6161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}