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Slope failures in municipal solid waste dumps and landfills: a review

Geoffrey Blight
Waste Manag Res 2008 26: 448
DOI: 10.1177/0734242X07087975

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Los Angeles, London, New Delhi
and Singapore
http://www.sagepub.com
Copyright © ISWA 2008
ISSN 0734–242X
Waste Management & Research
2008: 26: 448–463
DOI: 10.1177/0734242X07087975

Slope failures in municipal solid waste dumps and

landfills: a review
Geoffrey Blight
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Between 1977 and 2005 six large-scale failures of municipal solid waste dumps and landfills have been recorded in the technical
literature. The volumes of waste mobilized in the failures varied from 10–12 000 m3 in a failure that killed nearly 300 people to
1.5 million m3 in a failure that caused no deaths or injuries. Of the six failures, four occurred in dumps that, as far as is known,
had not been subjected to any prior technical investigation of their shear stability. The remaining two failures occurred in engi-
neer-designed landfills, one of which practised leachate recirculation, and the other co-disposed of liquid waste along with solid
waste. The paper reviews, describes and analyses the failures and summarizes their causes.

Keywords: slope failures, flow slides, municipal solid waste, wmr 1191–2

Introduction
The controlled disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW) was
only recognized as an activity falling within the sphere of the
civil engineer in the early 1930s (e.g. Calvert 1932, Jones &
Owen 1934) and the first technical guide to environmentally
acceptable disposal of MSW was published by the American
Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 1959. The ASCE used
the term ‘landfilling’ for a controlled operation in which MSW
is deposited in layers, each layer being compacted and covered
with soil before depositing the next. The soil cover layers were
and are intended to reduce odour, exclude insects and scaveng-
ing birds and mammals, as well as to limit the infiltration of
rain. Prior to 1959, and in many places, to this day, MSW was
and is disposed of by uncontrolled tipping or dumping, an
operation in which waste is tipped or dumped to fill in a pre-
existing hole, or else dumped on the side of a hill without any
attempt either to compact or cover it.
Until the 1990s failures of MSW dumps and landfills
appear to have been almost unknown, although one flow fail-
ure (Gandolla et al. 1979) and some slides in dumps or land-
fills not involving flow were reported (e.g. Dvirnoff & Munion
1986, Mitchell et al. 1990). Uncontrolled dumps, especially in
developing countries, were and are growing ever-larger and
more perilous, and in 1993 an uncontrolled hillside dump in
Istanbul (Kocasoy & Curi 1995) failed, killing at least 39 peo-
ple. Since then, as far as is known, and as listed in Table 1, fail-
ures of four more large dumps or landfills have occurred, two
of which between them, killed more than 400 people. Deaths
in six accidents between 1993 and 2005, involving the failure
of MSW deposits, now total more than 460, compared with
the 977 deaths that have occurred in 18 failures of mine waste
deposits between 1961 and 1996 (Blight & Fourie 2005).
This paper will review the six failures listed in Table 1 and
attempt to identify common factors that represent causes of
failure, or dangerous situations that can be identified and
remedied before a disaster occurs. The failures include four
in uncontrolled dumps and two in engineered landfills that
were apparently well designed and should have been control-
led and safe. The descriptions of the failures will therefore
be grouped into two parts dealing with failures of uncon-
trolled dumps and of engineered landfills.
Part 1: Failures of dumped municipal solid waste
The flow slide at Sarajevo (former Yugoslavia), 1977
The failure of a MSW dump at Sarajevo appears to be the
first flow slide of MSW to be recorded in the technical litera-
ture. In the 1970s, municipal solid waste from the city of
Sarajevo, which then had a population of 350 000, was dis-
posed of at a dump site located in hilly terrain 6 km outside
the limits of the city. The composition of the waste, accord-
ing to Gandolla et al. (1979) is shown in Table 2. The waste

Corresponding author: Geoffrey Blight, University of the Witwatersrand, P/Bag 3, Witwatersrandg, 2050 Johannesburg, South Africa.
Tel: +27 11 476 8759; fax: +27 11 476 8759; e-mail: blight@civil.wits.ac.za
Received 22 February 2007; accepted in revised form 6 December 2007

448
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 Slope failures in municipal solid waste dumps and landfills

Table 1: Failures and flow slides of MSW dumps and landfills described in the technical literature, 1977 to 2005. (The first four were failures of
uncontrolled dumps, the last two were failures of engineered and supposedly controlled landfills.).

Waste Volume of waste Distanceof

Year Location and references Consequences
compacted involved in flow (m3) flow (m)
1977 Sarajevo (former Yugoslavia) No 200 000 1000 Two bridges, five houses destroyed.
Gandolla et al. (1979) Widespread environmental damage.
No deaths or injuries.
1993 Istanbul (Turkey) No 12–15 000 60 At least 39 deaths, 11 houses destroyed.
Kocasoy & Curi (1995) Main sewer fractured. Sewage dammed
by waste.
2000 Quezon City, Manila No 10–12 000 40 278 confirmed deaths, 80 to 350 people
(Philippines) missing, presumed dead. Unknown
Merry et al. (2005) number of informal homes buried or
destroyed.
2005 Bandung (Indonesia) No 500 000–750 000 900 147 confirmed deaths, many more miss-
Koelsch et al. (2005) ing. Valley floor was covered by waste.
1997 Bogota, (Columbia) Hamilton Yes 1.5 × 106 500 River dammed by waste. Environmental
et al. (1998), Hendron et al. damage. No deaths or injuries.
(1999), Hendron (2006),
Caicedo et al. (2002)
1997 Durban (South Africa) Yes 150–180 000 80 No environmental damage. Flow con-
Blight (2004), Brink et al. (1999) fined to site. No deaths or injuries.

Table 2: Composition of waste involved in failures and flow slides of MSW dumps and landfills.

Dump or landfill and % composition of waste by undried mass

Component of waste Istanbul

Sarajevo Manilaa Bandungb Bogota Durbanc
B A
Ash, dust, sweepings 9 23 7 17 3 4 32
Paper and cardboard 45 15 15 13 2 14 16
Plastic. 9 10 3 4 4 24 14
Metals 3 4 3 2 4 3 3
Glass 8 6 <1 10 5 4 4
Food & garden waste 26 42 72 54 82 51 31
B, before scavenging; A, after scavenging.
a
Information from Rushbrook & Pugh (1999). Analyses for most other cities given by papers dealing with failures.
b
Although paper percentage is very low, photo of failure shows surface of dump was littered with paper.
c
Information from Davis & Freeman, 2000.

was end-tipped onto a hillside from a hilltop plateau at a
height of 670 m above sea level and formed a hill-side dump
that by 1977 had a tipping face that was 50 m high. In 1970 a
slip had occurred on the tipping face that involved 20 000 m3
of waste, and in December 1977 a much larger slide occurred
that carried 200 000 m3 of waste down into the valley. The
waste forming the slide liquefied and flowed more than 1 km
down the gently sloping hillside, eventually coming to rest at
the foot of the hill, where a residual volume of 100 000 m3 of
waste was deposited in a 1.5- to 2.5-m-thick layer. As a result
of the flow slide, two bridges and five houses were destroyed
(apparently without injury or loss of life to the householders)
and two stream beds were filled with waste.
No attempt was made to compact the waste. Gandolla et al.
investigated the failure and estimated, but apparently did not
measure, a pre-failure face angle of 60–75°. However, photo-
graphs in the paper by Gandolla et al. show that parts of the
dump which did not fail had much flatter slopes varying
between 40 and 50°. A slope viewed from the top or from the
front appears steeper than it actually is because of perspective
foreshortening of horizontal distances. [Note: As an example
of the tendency to over-estimate the steepness of slopes, the
author was once asked to comment on two engineer’s reports
on the stability of an illegal hillside dump. The dump con-
sisted of reinforced concrete rubble resulting from the demo-
lition by implosion of a series of reinforced concrete cooling
towers. One engineer had viewed the dump from below and
reported that the slope was ‘vertical to overhanging’. The
other had viewed it from the top and reported it to be ‘70° to
80°’. When measured, the slope angle proved to be only 38°.]

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G. Blight
Fig. 1: Plan and section of the MSW flow slide at Sarajevo, Yugoslavia in 1977.
Possibly because witnesses heard a loud noise when the
failure occurred, Gandolla et al. suspected that an explosion
of landfill gas had caused or accompanied the failure. How-
ever, sudden failures of tailings dams where there could be
no possibility of an explosion have also reportedly been
accompanied by loud bangs or explosion-like booms (e.g.
Blight & Fourie 2005). These noises are probably caused by a
sudden and large-scale displacement of air. Figure 1 shows a
plan and section of the slide taken (with the exception of the
face angle), from Gandolla et al. (1979). It appears from pho-
tographs and the section in the paper by Gandolla et al. that
a translational wedge failure took place, leaving a steep back
scarp with a height of about 40% of the total height of the
dump. Below the back scarp, the waste appears to have slid
along the surface of the hillside.
It was reported that streams of leachate were running from
the toe of the dump at the time of failure. Analyses of the lea-
chate made 10 months before and 2 weeks after the failure
showed ammonia contents of 3 to 10 mg L–1 and chloride con-
tents of 120 mg L–1. As a more usual range for ammonia in
leachate is 10 to 1500 mg L–1 and for chloride, 30 to 4000 mg L–1
(Andreottola & Cannas 1992), the measured values indicate a
very dilute leachate, the dilution probably resulting from
large quantities of winter rain infiltration into the uncom-
pacted and uncovered waste. The waste was also smouldering
in places.
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The flow slide at Istanbul, Turkey, 1993
The second flow slide of a hillside dump of MSW described
in the technical literature appears to be that which occurred
in the Ümraniye-Hekimbashi landfill in Istanbul, Turkey in
1993. (Kocasoy & Curi 1995).
The failure took place in April 1993. Accompanied by a
loud bang, a 12 000 m3 wedge of waste slid out of the tipping
face, liquefied and rapidly flowed down into the valley. It was
carried by its momentum a short way up the opposite slope,
demolishing eleven informal brick-built houses, and killing
39 of the occupants. Figure 2 is a photograph of the failure
taken from the south. A plan and section is shown in Figure 3.
Figure 2 shows smoke-haze from burning waste, houses of
the type destroyed by the flowing waste in the foreground,
and the swathe cut by the liquefied waste flowing from the
failed dump on the sky line. The maximum velocity of the
slide, estimated from the stagnation height of the flow was
60 km h–1. (Blight & Fourie 2005).
The slide was stated by Kocasoy & Curi to have involved
1.2 million m3 of waste. On checking from the contour plan
given in their paper (Figure 3), however, it became clear that
the volume of the slide was much smaller and actually
involved only 12 000 m3 of waste. The author was in Istanbul a
week after the failure occurred and was able to measure the
main dimensions of the dump, including the 45° slope of
those parts of the tipping face that had not failed. (A slope of

Fig. 2: View of failure of Ümraniye-Hekimbashi hillside waste dump in Istanbul, Turkey from the south. The haze is caused by smoke from
burning waste. Houses of the type buried or destroyed by the mass of flowing waste are to be seen in the foreground. (Photo by author).
45° was also measured at a second, similar hillside MSW
dump in Istanbul.) Figure 3 shows a section and plan of the
landfill and the course of the slide.
The composition of the waste, according to Kocasoy &
Curi, is listed in Table 2. The waste was dumped near the
edge of the hill-top tipping area situated above a steep (27°)
hillside. The incoming MSW was then sorted through by
informal reclaimers and then pushed over the edge by bull-
dozer, where it came to rest on the hillside at its angle of
repose of 45°. There was no compaction of the waste and no
attempt to cover it. As a result, the waste absorbed much of
the rain that fell on it, as well as the runoff from the tipping
platform. The waste was burning in several places and
streams of leachate ran from the toe of the dump and down
the hillside into the valley bottom. In 1992 it was decided
that the waste should be covered, and late that year the site
operator covered the sub-horizontal tipping platform with 3–
5 m of demolition waste and soil. This suddenly applied addi-
tional disturbing force, equivalent to 6–10 m of MSW,
together with the winter rain, probably triggered the failure.
The slide at Quezon City, Manila, Philippines, 2000
Deposition of MSW at the Payatas site in Quezon City appar-
ently started in 1973 as a means of filling a local depression in
the ground (Merry et al. 2005). The filling operation devel-
oped into a small uncontrolled waste dump. In 1988 the
Smoky Mountain landfill in Manila was closed and 1500 to
1800 tons per day of MSW were diverted from Smoky Moun-
tain to Payatas, where two individual dumps developed, sepa-
rated by a stream. By the year 2000, the larger of these dumps
(the one that failed) covered an area of 12.7 ha and was 18 to
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Slope failures in municipal solid waste dumps and landfills
30 m high. Incoming waste was dumped on the top of the
existing MSW fill and, after being picked over by informal
reclaimers, was bulldozed over the tipping edge to form a face
at the angle of repose. The surface of the ground on which
the dump had been formed, sloped gently at about 2° away
from the dump. In late 1999, the contractor operating the
dump began to bulldoze waste from the centre of the top of
the dump towards and over the edges with the result that a
basin was created on the top and the slopes around the
edges were covered with freshly deposited MSW at its angle
of repose.
In the 10 days preceding the failure, exceptionally heavy
rain, amounting to 750 mm, fell in the Payatas area and
reportedly created a lake of storm water in the basin on top
of the dump. The contractor cut a deep trench to drain the
lake and allow the water to run down the steep outer dump
slopes. At some time earlier, a 2–3 m deep open trench had
been cut along the toe of the face to intercept the streams of
leachate running from it. The waste was also burning in places.
What made the situation particularly dangerous was that large
numbers of informal reclaimers, working on the dump, had
established their makeshift shack homes right at the toe of
the waste slope. The failure began at 0430 h on 10 July 2000
when loud cracking noises were reportedly heard coming
from the waste body. The slide occurred 3 h later when an
estimated 9–10 000 m3 of waste slid forward, burying or
destroying all the shack homes in its path. The waste does not,
however, appear to have liquefied as it only moved forward a
relatively short distance and the failure has the appearance
of a translational wedge failure of the freshly tipped MSW,
rather than a rotational slide.
451
G. Blight
Fig. 3: Plan and section of the MSW flow slide at Istanbul, Turkey in 1995.
Figure 4 is an aerial view of the dump after the failure. At
the toe of the dump, to the right of the failure, a large area of
shack homes can be seen. This area extended further to the
left, and houses in the extension were deeply buried by the
wedge of sliding waste. The burying of these houses was the
cause of the enormous death toll. Fifty-eight people were res-
cued, and after weeks of searching and digging, 278 bodies
had been recovered, leaving between 80 and 350 missing,
believed dead. Thus the death-toll may have exceeded 600.
The smouldering waste, exposed to oxygen by the slide,
started to burn.
452
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Due to the lack of plans or even isolated dimensions for
the dump, it is difficult to accurately reconstruct what hap-
pened. Figure 5 shows the present author’s reconstruction
made from photographs and the information given by Merry
et al. (2005). The estimated pre-failure profile of the dump
and the post-failure profile represent as good an estimate as
could be made from available information. It appears from
photographs that the failure surface probably passed entirely
through waste, and along the ground surface below the dump.
Merry et al. estimated the pre-failure slope of the dump to
have been 34°. It appears, however, that the angle they meas-

Fig. 4: View of failure of Payatas waste dump at Quezon City, Manila, Phillipines in 2000. A strip of shack homes at the toe of the dump was bur-
ied by the failure. (Photo provided by Professor Manassero).
ured off a photograph of the failure was that of an old slope
that had settled and flattened. Figure 4 (and especially the
colour version available on the Internet) shows linear tracks
on top of the dump caused by recent bulldozing of waste
over the edge of the dump in the area that failed. The newly-
formed surfaces are light grey in tone, whereas the older
slopes are darker and, in the colour version, show the green
of new vegetation. To confirm that these slopes are not new,
a scattering of shack homes is visible on the narrow berms
cut in the slope surface. Hence the pre-failure angle of
repose of the section of slope that failed was almost certainly
steeper than 34° and has been shown as 40° in Figure 5. In
the section they analysed, Merry et al. assumed that the orig-
inal ground level sloped down from the toe, under the dump
towards the crest. However, they also show a section for a
1992 final closure design that was ‘very near to where the
failure took place’, (to quote Merry et al.). This clearly shows
that the original ground level sloped upwards towards the
crest at 7° and this angle has been shown in Figure 5.
No information is available for the likely composition of
the waste, and the best available estimate is data given for
Manila for 1982 (Cointreau 1982, quoted by Rushbrook &
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Slope failures in municipal solid waste dumps and landfills
Pugh 1999). These data are shown in Table 2. It is not known
if the composition given was before or after being scavenged.
The flow slide at Bandung, Indonesia, 2005
In the early years of the twenty-first century, MSW collected
in the city of Bandung, capital of the West Java province of
Indonesia, was dumped, without systematic compaction, into
a narrow valley or canyon at Leeuwigajah (Koelsch et al.
2005). The population of Bandung is about 6 million, and the
Leeuwigajah site received 4500 tons of MSW collected daily.
As was the case at Quezon City, informal recyclers had
moved into the dump area and set up shack homes on the
dump.
The floor of the valley (or canyon) slopes away from the
dump at 3–6° and consists of a thin layer of silty clay over
rock. Before the dumping site was established, the canyon
was drained by a stream, the run-off coming from the annual
rainfall of 1500–2000 mm year–1. According to Koelsch et al.,
the operator estimated the angle of the tipping face to have
been 30-40°, and in their analysis. Koelsch et al. assumed 40°.
They believed that the failure took place by translational
sliding in the silty clay layer underlying the waste. It appears
453
G. Blight

Fig. 5: Section of the slide at Payatas MSW dump, Quezon City, Phillipines in 2000.

from diagrams in their paper that they believe the inclination
of the failure surface to have been 50°.
The failure took place on 21 February 2005 after 3 days of
heavy rainfall. Witnesses reported that the failure was accom-
panied by a sound like a roll of thunder. The waste failed, liq-
uefied and flowed for nearly 1 km down the canyon. Casual-
ties were mainly among the shack-dwellers living on the
dump. The true death-toll will never be known; 147 bodies
were recovered, but it is not known how many went missing.
Figure 6 is the present author’s reconstruction of the failure
based on the report by Koelsch et al. with the back scarp angle
β shown as 60°.
Part 2: Failures of engineered ‘controlled’
landfills
The failure at Bogota, Colombia, 1997
The Dona Juana land-fill in Bogota was designed as an engi-
neered bio-reactor landfill incorporating leachate recircula-

Fig. 6: Plan and section of the MSW flow slide at Bandung, Indonesia in 2005.

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Fig. 7: (upper) Plan of slide at Bogota, Colombia in 1997. (lower) Section along line AB identified in upper part.
tion to accelerate the rate of stabilization of the MSW. Situ-
ated 20 km from the center of Bogota, the landfill at that
time received 4500 tons of MSW per day. The composition
of the waste is given in Table 2. The design incorporated a
natural clay bottom liner covered by an untextured polyvinyl
chloride (PVC) geomembrane. A leachate collection system,
consisting of perforated pipes in a gravel bed, drained leach-
ate to a leachate pumping station from where it was re-circu-
lated into the waste by a series of injection pipes. Landfill gas
was vented to atmosphere via vertical wells or chimneys built
into the waste, which were extended as the waste level rose.
The landfill is situated in mountainous terrain on one bank
of the Tunjuelito river.
The failure occurred on a Saturday afternoon when a toe
section of the sloping landfill slid downhill, followed by a
series of sections behind it. The failure process continued for
about 4 h during which the waste travelled more than 0.5 km
horizontally and lost 100 m in elevation, damming the river
and partially filling a quarry on its far bank. Very fortunately,
no one was injured or killed by the mass of flowing waste.
Figure 7 shows a plan of the slide and its course, as well as a
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Slope failures in municipal solid waste dumps and landfills
longitudinal section. The slide involved about 1.5 × 106 m3 of
waste.
The failure was examined by a number of investigative
teams, whose observations and conclusions were reported by
Hamilton et al. (1998), Hendron et al. (1999) and Caicedo et
al. (2002a). Hamilton et al. noted that compaction appeared
inconsistent, resulting in a relatively loose waste mass. Poor
control of storm-water run-off and of leachate re-circulation
resulted in a very wet landfill, with leachate periodically
erupting from the landfill gas relief wells. Waste reached the
landfill in plastic bags that appeared to remain largely intact
after compaction, resulting in extensive plastic-to-plastic inter-
faces within the landfilled waste. Finally, the landfill liner con-
sisted of PVC, with a smooth, untextured surface, placed on an
unprepared subgrade with no protection layer to increase the
waste-to-liner interfacial friction. Hendron et al. and Caicedo
et al. independently concluded that high pore water pressures
in the excessively wet waste body were mainly responsible for
the instability and failure. Hendron et al. concluded that ‘the
primary failure surface… occurred along one of the horizon-
tal cover layers’, and did not involve sliding on the untextured
455
G. Blight

Fig. 8: (upper) Plan view of flow failure at Durban, South Africa in 1997. (lower) Section AA through landfill along valley.

geomembrane. The cover layers were placed at 2.5 m vertical
intervals and probably consisted of the clayey sands and silts
that were stripped from the site in preparation for installing
the liner.
The failure at Durban, South Africa, 1997
The Bulbul landfill in Durban, South Africa, is a co-disposal
landfill that is permitted to co-dispose of medium hazard-
rating liquid industrial effluents and sludges along with ‘dry’
MSW. The process of co-disposal involves digging trenches
in previously landfilled and compacted ‘dry’ waste and allow-
ing the liquids and liquid components of the sludges to seep
into the pores in the solid waste. The extent of co-disposal is
controlled by the ‘co-disposal ratio’, the ratio of the mass of
dry waste to the mass of liquid co-disposed. The composition
of the ‘dry’ waste is listed in Table 2. The landfill is sited at
the head of a valley that has a floor slope of 7° and side
slopes of up to 19°. Landfilling was started near the head of
the valley and proceeded down-valley in phases, with a berm
provided across the valley at the toe of each phase to
increase slope stability. The lower diagram in Figure 8 shows
a section along the valley floor through the highest part of
the landfill. The section shows the completed phases 1 and
1A and phase 1B (the phase that failed) when it reached a

456
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height of 45 m above its toe. The design for phase 1B, carried
out by a consulting geotechnical engineer, was specifically
for the site preparation, including assessments of the stability
of the landfill slopes. Phases 1 and 1A had been completed
to a similar design, the only difference being the introduction
of the composite clay/geomembrane liner in phase 1B. The
average slope of the finished landfill face was to be the same
as for the earlier phases, 1 on 1.83 or 28.6°, although the
actual average slope when the landfill failed was only 23°.
The design called for special treatment of the stepped face of
phase 1A at its interface with phase 1B, including compac-
tion of the face, re-sloping of the berms so that they would
not entrap leachate and the provision of a full area, full
height crushed stone drainage blanket to drain away any lea-
chate that might reach the interface.
The events that led to the failure have been reported in
detail by the author (Blight 2004), who was able to inspect the
failure a day after it occurred, and prepared evidence for a
consequent court action. Suffice it to say that the consultant
was dismissed after he had provided the design, and was not
permitted by the owner to supervise its implementation. The
drainage provisions of the design were omitted, and the co-
disposal ratio was later arbitrarily changed to allow a greater
volume of liquids and sludges to be co-disposed with the same
mass of dry waste. In the process of co-disposal of liquid and
dry waste, the co-disposal trenches are intended to be used
only once, whereafter they should be backfilled with dry waste,
compacted and a new trench prepared, in order to disperse the
liquids as widely as possible within the waste. At Bulbul, only
one trench was used, located against the face of the previous
landfill phase. This trench was formed by leaving a long slot-
shaped cavity in the waste, against the face of the previous
phase. Thus the top of the trench rose with the level of the
landfill and the co-disposed liquids were concentrated in the
plane forming the interface between successive landfill phases.
In the early hours of 8 September, 1997, the landfill sud-
denly failed and 150–180 000 m3 of waste flowed down into
the valley below. No-one was present on the landfill at the
time, and most of the waste flowed onto an area that had
been lined to receive the future phase 1C of the landfill. The
flow was completely contained within the boundaries of the
waste disposal area. Thus there were no injuries and little
environmental damage or publicity.
A liquid balance that had been prepared for the operators
of the landfill a few weeks before the failure had shown that
in addition to rainfall and evaporation, leachate outflow and
the water content of the incoming ‘dry’ waste, there was an
ever-increasing quantity of liquids that could not be
accounted for. The liquids were obviously accumulating in
the waste body and building up a head of pore pressure. This
was reported to the owners, but before the danger of the sit-
uation could be assessed, the failure occurred.
The upper photograph in Figure 9 shows the landfill as it
was a few weeks before the failure. The newly lined area for
phase 1C can be seen in preparation at the toe of the exist-
ing, and almost full phase 1B. The photo below shows the
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Slope failures in municipal solid waste dumps and landfills
failure with the failure scarp that marks the position of the
co-disposal trench and exposes the front face of the previ-
ously completed phase 1A.
The possible contribution of static liquefaction
to the failures
With the exception of the failure at Quezon City, once fail-
ure of each uncontrolled MSW dump or controlled landfill
had occurred, the MSW involved in the failure showed a
mobility that was indicative of the occurrence of static lique-
faction. Static liquefaction has been identified as the key
cause of flow failures in a number of tailings dams (e.g.
Blight 2000, Fourie et al. 2001, Jefferies & Bean 2006). Fig-
ure 10 (after Olson & Stark 2003) explains the mechanisms
of static and dynamic liquefaction in a saturated cohesionless
sandy or silty soil (e.g. tailings) that has a sufficiently large
void ratio to be contractive when subjected to shear stress.
Diagram (a) represents the strain response when the soil is
subjected to a static, cyclically applied or seismic shear stress
under undrained conditions. In diagram (a), point A repre-
sents the result of applying a static in-situ shear stress that
can be matched by the available shear resistance. If the shear
stress is increased sufficiently to reach the maximum availa-
ble undrained shear strength, at B, the yield shear stress
under undrained conditions, (e.g. by depositing another lift
of material), any attempt to increase the shear stress further
can only result in a decrease of available shear stress resist-
ance, and the soil will spontaneously strain from B to C. On
the accompanying diagram (b) the stress path will move from
the initial point A, to B on the yield strength envelope, to C
on the failure envelope and beyond. The available shear
strength will decrease substantially, and the strain or defor-
mation will increase to a large degree. Alternatively, if (in
both diagrams (a) and (b)) the soil creeps under static shear
stress A from A to D, then when the creep strain path
reaches point D, the strain will spontaneously increase to C.
A third possibility is that cyclic or seismic stress applications,
together with their accompanying irreversible strains, will
move a point such as A1 to point E. Once again, the soil will
spontaneously lose strength and the strain (diagram (a)) or
stress (diagram (b)) will move towards C. Once the strain or
stress path passes point B, progression to point C may be
very rapid, resulting in catastrophic failure.
At the time of writing, although several investigators have
considered the possibility of static liquefaction in MSW, none
has identified or demonstrated it (e.g. Caicedo et al. 2000b,
Vilar & Carvalho 2002). Two of the experimental difficulties
are that it is practically impossible to retrieve undisturbed
specimens of MSW to test in laboratory apparatus, and it is
equally difficult to test a large specimen of MSW in situ, in a
saturated undisturbed condition.
The possible role in the failures of layering
in the waste
In the cases reviewed in this paper, the presence of layers of
potentially liquefiable material in the dumps or landfills,
457
G. Blight

Fig. 9: The failure of Bulbul landfill, Durban: (a) the landfill as it appeared a few weeks before the failure. The area below the landfill face is
being lined to receive the next extension to the landfill. (b) The failure, showing the extent to which the waste flowed. The failure scarp formed
in the co-disposal trench that was being used when the failure occurred (photos provided by Professor Manessero).

together with saturated or high water content conditions in
certain critical areas (e.g. the interface between a hillside or
canyon floor, or even an intermediate loose soil cover layer
may have been important in triggering static liquefaction and
the subsequent mobility of the failed MSW body. In the case
of the Bogota flow slide, Hendron et al. (1999) identified the
origin of the failure as a horizontal soil intermediate cover
layer. As cover layers are rarely well compacted and, in this
case, quite possibly saturated, it is very possible that static
liquefaction of the cover layer could have triggered the
larger failure.
It is perhaps more difficult to imagine loose, weak layers
occurring in a hillside dump of MSW. It must be realized that
not only is dumped MSW highly heterogeneous and quite

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 Slope failures in municipal solid waste dumps and landfills

Fig. 10: The mechanism of liquefaction in a saturated contractive soil (after Olson & Stark 2003).

Table 3: Seasonal variations of composition of waste (by dry mass) originating from poor and wealthy communities in South Africa (after
Shamrock, 1998).

Poor community Wealthy community

Component of waste
Summer Winter Summer Winter
Ash, dust and sweepings 53% 78% Negligible Negligible
Paper, cardboard and textiles 7% 1% 29% 22%
Plastic 5% 2% 12% 11%
Metals 2% 1% 11% 9%
Glass 1% 1% 3% 15%
Food and garden waste 29% 10% 42% 41%
Miscellaneous other 3% 7% 3% 2%

uncompacted, with properties that change irregularly as
decomposition proceeds, but the composition of MSW
changes seasonally and also depends on the financial status
of the community that produces it. Table 3 (after Shamrock
1998) gives examples of differences in waste composition,
both seasonally and with financial status. For the poor com-
munity, the total of ash, paper and food and garden waste
amounted to 89% in both summer and winter, and the higher
ash content in winter suggests that most of the paper, and
food and garden waste was burned for warmth in winter. The
biggest difference between the poor and wealthy communi-
ties is the large ash, dust and sweepings content of the poor
community’s waste, as opposed to the almost complete
absence of this component from the wealthy community’s
waste. In addition, the poor community produces about 40 tons
ha–1 year–1 of waste, in comparison with the wealthy commu-
nity’s 10 tons ha–1 year–1 (Blight 2006). As in many develop-
ing countries, the surface area occupied by poor communities
may be two to four times that occupied by wealthy communi-
ties, the weekly tonnage of ‘poor’ waste collected may be eight
or more times that of ‘wealthy’ waste. Thus it is entirely possi-
ble that an uncontrolled MSW dump in a developing country
may consist of thick weekly layers of ‘poor’ waste, alternating
with thinner layers of ‘wealthy’ waste. Superimposed on the
‘poor-to-wealthy’ layering will be a ‘summer-to-winter’ layer-
ing, as indicated in Figure 11(a).
Figure 11(b) shows the more easily visualized layering
introduced into a sanitary landfill by the presence of soil
cover layers. If, either by chance or poor design, the cover
layers coincide unfavourably, as shown in Figure 11(b), a
weak path may be introduced into the landfill that could
determine the path of a future failure. It should also be
noted that compacted MSW is a relatively high-strength
cohesive material, (e.g. Caicedo et al. 2002b), whereas uncom-
pacted end tipped MSW is weak and cohesionless.
Stability analyses of the six failures
Uncontrolled waste dumps in developing countries are often
located in terrain for which there are no adequate or no sur-
vey data available. The dumps themselves have also usually
not been surveyed either before or after the failure. Exam-
ples are the dump at Sarajevo (Yugoslavia), where the only
existing measurements are a plan with no easily decipherable
scale or contour interval and only three spot elevations and a
plan dimension, established by the investigators (Gandolla et
al. 1979). No survey data whatsoever has been discovered for
the dumps at Quezon City, Manila (Phillipines) and Band-
ung (Indonesia), and it has been necessary to rely on esti-
mated heights and distances and angles measured on photo-
graphs. A lack of both accurate dimensions and properties of
the waste makes accurate analysis of a failure impossible. Pie-
zometers are unusual even in controlled engineered sanitary

459
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G. Blight

Fig. 11: (a) Possible layering of an end-tipped hillside dump; (b) layering in a controlled sanitary landfill and possible unfortunate coincidence of
inclined cover layers providing path for failure; (c) Qian–Koerner–Gray stability analysis for a landfill containing layers and waste-to-ground
interfaces.

landfills, and apart from knowing that pore water pressure
(and possibly gas pressure) must have played an important
role in the failures, lack of quantitative knowledge of possible
pore pressures limits analyses to total stress terms in all of the
failures described in this paper. Most of the failures have
already been analysed in terms of total stresses, but apparently
without considering the constraints on the form of the failures
that may have been exerted by the method of deposition and
boundaries and the almost certain presence of layering in the
waste. In the case of the failure at Bogota (Caicedo et al.
2002a), a careful analysis was carried out using shear strength
parameters measured in situ and considering the effects of
pore pressure, as far as these could be estimated, but this was
the only case in which it was possible to do this.
Recognizing these limitations, it was nevertheless consid-
ered useful to analyse all of the failures on a similar basis in
order to make a comparative analysis of the possible reasons
for their failure, considering the likely effects of the presence
of layering on the location of the failure surfaces. To do this,
the method of analysis proposed by Qian et al. (2003) was
selected. The basis for this method is outlined in Figure 11(c)
and in what follows. The method recognizes that a lateral
translational failure is the most likely failure to occur in
MSW, with the waste sliding at the interface of a weak
boundary between the waste and the underlying ground (PQ
in Figure 11(c)), as appears to have been the case with the
hillside dumps at Sarajevo, Istanbul, Bandung and even Que-
zon City, or on some other weak interface such as a cover

460
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layer (Bogota) or a basal lining and the face of the previous
landfilling phase (Durban). Furthermore, as indicated in Fig-
ure 11(c), (QR) the extension of the failure surface back
from the toe can continue along a lined or unlined back
slope (e.g. at Durban) or can propagate through the loose,
dumped solid waste (e.g. Sarajevo, Istanbul, Quezon City
and Bandung) or follow some other weak internal surface
(AAA in Figure 11(b)). The analysis is made in terms of total
stresses, as a purely frictional problem, where the interfacial
strength as well as the strength of the waste may have to be
characterized by a single average total stress friction angle ϕ,
or a combination of ϕ and an estimated interfacial friction
angle δ. With the exception of the Bogota failure, nothing is
known of the shear strengths of either waste or interfaces
and hence each analysis estimates the average total stress
angle ϕ for a factor of safety F = 1. The method has the big
advantage that, being purely frictional, the result depends on
the geometry of the failure, but is independent of the self-
weight of the sliding mass. Hence it is not necessary to know
the unit weight of the waste.
The results of the calculations, as values of ϕ for F = 1
and an assumed back-scarp angle β = 60° have been inset in
Figures 1, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8. The actual angles of the back
scarps are not known, but in an investigation of a series of
translational wedge-type failures in mine waste rock dumps,
it was established that with a ϕ′ for the waste rock of 40°, the
back scarp angle was close to 62°, whereas the theoretical
failure surface inclination if the major principal stress is ver-
tical, is (45° + ϕ′/2) = 65° (Blight 1969). Hence, in the case
of the dumped MSW landfill failures, taking ϕ′ = 35° as a
likely single shear strength parameter for the waste and asso-
ciated interfaces (see Vilar & Carvalho 2002) a back scarp
angle β = 60° seems appropriate.
Although compaction of MSW causes cohesion to
develop (e.g. Vilar & Carvalho), both as a result of the densi-
fication and pre-consolidation by the compaction pressure
and by interlinking of the fibrous content of the MSW, end-
tipped MSW comes to rest on the tipping face in its loosest
possible state with little linking of fibres. It is thus likely to
behave as a cohesionless frictional material, even after being
normally consolidated under the advancing mass of MSW
tipped over it.
Table 4: Values of the pore pressure ratio u/σn based on stability
analysis by the method of Qian et al. (2003).
Location µ/σn
Sarajevo 0.42
Istanbul 0.14
Quezon City 0.21
Bandung 0.70
Bogota 0.81
Durban 0.67 (β = 21°)
Angle of shearing resistance: ϕ′ = 35°.
Back scarp angle β = 60° (except for Durban).
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Slope failures in municipal solid waste dumps and landfills
Having established the likely average value of ϕ for F = 1,
some idea of the ratio of pore pressure to total normal stress
across the failure surfaces can be gained from the equation
for the average shear strength at failure.
τf = σn tan ϕ = (σn – u) tan ϕ′ (1a)
If a reasonable value for ϕ′ is selected, then
u/σn = 1 – tan ϕ/tan ϕ′ (1b)
Assuming ϕ′ = 35° and β at failure = 60° (except for Dur-
ban), values for the pore pressure ratio u/σn were as given in
Table 4. The table shows that the failures at Bandung,
Bogota and Durban (high value of u/σn) were strongly influ-
enced by pore pressure on the failure surfaces, whereas those
at Istanbul and Quezon City were much less so, with Sara-
jevo being an intermediate case.
Comments, summary and conclusions
1. Of the six failures described in this review, three were
responsible for 464 confirmed deaths, and the actual
death toll may have exceeded 800. Fortunately, the other
three failures caused no injuries. All of the failures resulted
in large environmental clean-up and repair costs.
2. The information given in Table 2, concerning the likely
composition of the waste involved in the failures, is unlikely
to be accurate. Nevertheless, it indicates that with the
exception of the Sarajevo failure (in which the paper and
cardboard content was high), the MSW involved in the fail-
ures was fairly similar in composition. The composition of
MSW for Bandung shows a very low paper and cardboard
percentage, but the lower photograph in Figure 6 shows
the surface of the failure littered with what may have been
paper, and the percentage listed in Table 2 may be too low.
3. The volumes of waste involved in the failures varied from
10–12 000 m3 at Quezon City to 1.5 million m3 at Bogota.
Circumstances were such that the failure involving move-
ment of the smallest volume of waste exacted the largest
death-toll.
4. Primary factors in all of the failures were lack of engineer-
ing control, lack of design for the dumps described in Part
1 and lack of understanding of design and operating prin-
ciples in Part2. A lack of appreciation of the effects of
phreatic surface elevation and slope angle on the stability
of slopes was also evident. In some cases, phreatic condi-
tions were exacerbated by extreme weather conditions.
• At Sarajevo, the leachate streaming from the dump was
regularly sampled and chemically analysed, yet the
danger of a mass of waste perched on a steep hillside,
steadily increasing in height and subject to internal
seepage pressure was not perceived, even after the
small failure in 1970. Both failures occurred during the
winter rains.
• The Istanbul dump was also steadily increasing in
height and had streams of leachate running from its
461
G. Blight
toe. The failure occurred after surcharging the dump
surface with a heavy capping layer and also at the end
of the winter rains.
• Weather conditions at Quezon City were extreme, with
750 mm of precipitation in the 10 days before the failure,
and recent bulldozing of waste over the edge of the dump,
causing an increase in height of the section that failed.
• At Bandung, MSW was deposited over a natural stream
bed in a climatically wet area and the failure occurred
after 3 days of heavy rain. Here also, the height of the
tipping face was increasing as the dumped waste
advanced down the canyon.
In all four of the above cases, the MSW was end-tipped at
its angle of repose with no compaction and no cover layers
to limit rainfall infiltration.
• In Bogota, the major cause of the failure was identi-
fied as excess pore water and gas pressure caused by
poorly controlled leachate re-circulation in poorly
compacted MSW. The failure may have been trig-
gered by static liquefaction in a saturated loose soil
cover layer.
• At the Durban co-disposal landfill, omitting drainage
measures and an arbitrary decrease of the co-disposal
ratio allowed the operators to increase the ratio of liq-
uid to ‘dry’ MSW. This increased the quantity of fluids
stored in the waste, and the liquids were concentrated
in an uncompacted zone of the landfill that eventually
contained the failure surface. The zone of the landfill
that failed was increasing in height, but failed before
reaching its planned maximum height.
5. An important contributory factor leading to the failures,
was the complete absence of compaction of the waste or
of consistent and uniform compaction. This applied to all
of the uncontrolled dumps, although at all of these, some
localized compaction at the top of the dump would have
been produced by the vibration of the bulldozers used to
end-tip the MSW. In Bogota, one of the investigative
teams (Hamilton et al.) specifically referred to the pres-
ence of loose, poorly compacted zones of waste. In Dur-
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