The image of this failed bauxite tailings dam is very tragic and the pictures of the impact to the local town are very sad. But one thing that struck me about this particular image is how it appears that the failure occurred at the corner of the tailings impoundment. How many of us geotechnical engineers would have analyzed the corner? Most of the time you would pick a cross-section that appears to be conservative and go with that. Maybe you analyze both sides, but likely not the corner. I wonder what happened in this case…interesting. [Source: Dave’s Landslide Blog. Image: Dave’s Landslide Blog]
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Devil’s Slide Repair and Tunnel Bypass Presentation
[Updated Thursday May 29, 2009 – 1:00 PM PDT] Added a photo of the AIS Kaiser S2 excavator (spider excavator), and added photos of the Devil’s Slide debris dump where they have put the landslide material removed and the material from the tunnel excavation. [/Update]
Grant Wilcox, Geology Branch Chief with CALTRANS Office of Geotechnical Design West gave a presentation on the Devil’s Slide repair along PCH Highway 1 at the Southwest Geotechnical Engineer’s Conference on May 12 in Phoenix. I’ve posted about the project here before. When I saw Mr. Wilcox, I knew he looked familiar but I couldn’t figure out why. At the beginning of his presentation he made light of his being on You-Tube…then it clicked! He gave a nice overview of the history of the failures, the geology, and the tunnel project. What follows are a few quick tidbits from his talk based on my notes. (Photo via Caltrans site).