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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Oregon Landslide News and Map
This is definitely the season for landslides, mudslides, debris flows and other mayhem in Oregon and elsewhere in the pacific northwest. It seems like every time I turn around there is another Google Alert in my inbox about a landslide related issue in that area. Having a hard time keeping up with it all, I decided to try something new. Click through to see a map of automatically updated landslide news in Oregon. Lets call it a Beta…so we’ll see if it works out. If it does, maybe I’ll try something similar for other areas or other items that tend to make it into the news. (Photo by Ross William Hamilton/The Oregonian)