A massive slope failure has occurred at the open pit of the Bingham Canyon Mine in Utah. Here is a link to a magnificent collection of photographs of the failure, which appears to have taken out part of a building, access roads, and filled the bottom of the pit with slide material. Nobody was hurt: the mine had been monitoring movement and when deformation increased from 1 mm a day to 5 mms day they pulled out all workers. A fine testament to the engineers who study rock and soil slope stability in the open pit mine context. (more…)
