Aaron Murdock

GEOG 1000

ALA 10 - Landslide Analysis

The Bingham Canyon Mine is vulnerable to landslides because of the steepness of its
slopes, the man-made changes and undercutting of the slopes, its loose materials, and other
man-made triggers from the mining process.
The shear component of the mine was and is fairly high. The greater the angle of repose
of the loose material that makes up a slope, the higher the risk for slope failure. The new angle
of repose is supposed to be better than the last according to engineers interviewed by the Salt
Lake Tribune.
Being a mine, there are heavy trucks and various structures around the mine. Roads are
built to reach the depths of the mine. The trucks used to haul the dirt are enormous, with tires
twice as tall as an adult, and weigh as much as 320 tons. They haul 1 million pounds at a time.
This is a lot of weight on the slopes of the mine. It likely caused the dirt to become unstable over
time with continued impact. Undercutting could have also affected the slopes of overburden
from the mine as the company delved deeper into the center of the pit.
The slopes are terraced in an attempt to prevent sliding and provide structural integrity,
but the composition of the soil could have contributed to the slide. The copper and other ores
are within host rock that must be processed in a smelter and refinery to extract the precious
metal.
On Saturday, June 24th of this year a large landslide occurred in the Sichuan Province
of China. It was triggered by heavy rains in the region and his the village of Xinmo of Mao
County. Three hundred people survived the slide, but 118 were missing and 15 confirmed dead.
The slide had an estimated 8 million m3 rocks and earth. 1,000 people tried to help the buried
people. The slide also blocked a road for about a mile and a nearby river for just over a mile.
The torrential rain of the season loosened the rocks and earth on the nearby mountain.
This region of China is prone to landslides because of the mountainous terrain and frequent
rain. Such heavy rain can cause erosion and loosen the soil.
Another area of China in Gansu, Zhouqu County was hit by a mudslide in 2010 at
midnight on August 8th. It is north of the last location and has a similar monsoon climate, so it
was again rainfall that caused the slide. Over 1,400 people died and nearly 300 were still
missing. More than 1,200 were rescued from the slide. A natural dam had caused water to build
up in a river near the city of Zhugqu. Whereas the slide was caused by water bursting from a
dam, the material moved rapidly and was impossible to outrun. When it broke, 64 million cubic
feet of mud, rocks, water, and debris surged through the city, leaving a swath 3 miles long. One
paper argued that an earthquake two years earlier could have contributed to the slide.
It’s odd to me that so many landslides occur in this area of China and yet people still live
here. This region, which covers a large area northeast of the Himalayas, is prone to heavy
rainfall and flooding. This leads to inevitable landslides, rock avalanches, and mudslides as
water weathers rocks and erodes mountainsides.