At least three dead following landslide at a waste dump in Cebu City, the Philippines.

Three people have now been confirmed dead and thirty five are still missing following a landslide at a waste dump in Cebu City, the Philippines, on Thursday 8 January 2026. The incident happened at about 4.00 pm local time, crushing a building where waste was sorted and compacted, and burying 50 sanitation workers at the site. Since this time twelve have been pulled out of the debris alive and three have been found dead. Rescue efforts are being hampered by rainfall, as well as methane leaking from the site which prevents the use of cutting equipment which might create sparks.

The aftermath of a landslide at the Barangay Binaliw waste dump outside Cebu City in the Philippines. Jacqueline Hernandez/Rappler.

The Barangay Binaliw waste site opened in 2019 on the site of a former Mango plantation, and has been dogged by controversy ever since. The site is officially a landfill site, however, landfill sites comprise one or more large excavated pits, which are then lined with waterproof clay and a dense plastic lining, and once they are filled to an agreed level, are sealed with more clay and then topsoil. Inspectors from the Cebu City Environment and Natural Resources Office were unable to find any trace of such a lining when they inspected the site in August 2024, instead finding an open dump site where waste was being piled ever higher.

Waste at the Barangay Binaliw site in September 2024. Juan Carlo de Vela/Sun Star.

Since its opening, people living close to the Barangay Binaliw site have complained about foul smells emerging from the site, and increasingly about the precarious way in which waste has been piled up, at a site close to many local homes. Despite these claims, the city has continued to send waste to the privately-owned site, something which has led to accusations of corruption, but which is probably more a result of a lack of alternative facilities to accommodate waste from the city, which has a population of about a million people.

A building crushed by debris following a landslide at the Barangay Binaliw waste site near Cebu City in the Philippines on 8 January 2025. Philippine Star.

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At least 32 miners killed in incident in Lualaba Province, Democratic Republic of Congo.

At least 32 people have died, with some sources giving a larger number of 49, following the collapse of a makeshift bridge at a mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The incident happened at the Kalando Cobalt Mine in Lualaba Province, Democratic Republic of Congo, on Saturday 15 November 2025, following an incursion at the mine by wildcat miners. The mine was closed at the time following heavy rains, which had led to concerns about the danger of landslides, but like many mines in the area is prone to incursions by informal miners, who take advantage of any suspension of regular activities. 

On this occasion the miners had entered the mine via bridge over a flooded trench to enter the site. However, soldiers who had been deployed to guard the mine fired upon these miners, injuring two and causing a panic which led to a large number of people trying to cross the bridge at once. While this was happening one of the walls of the open pit mine collapsed, with the subsequent landslide hitting the bridge.

The moment a landslide hit a bridge covered at a mine in Lualaba Province, Democratic Republic of Congo. AlJazeera. 

Informal artisanal mining is common in many parts of Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, which like may other countries has granted concessions to mining companies in areas where small-scale artisanal mining has traditionally helped to supplement the incomes of subsistence farmers. However, little of the money from such projects tends to reach local communities, which often leads to ill feeling and attempts to continue mining clandestinely, often at night or under other unfavourable conditions, which can put the miners at greater risk.

Artisanal miners at the Kalando site that until 2018, they had been free to operate as they pleased, but since that time the site had been taken over by a company with links to the family of President Felix Tshisekedi, as well as Chinese business interests. The Congolese Government claims that it has tried to exclude untrained miners from the site precisely because it feared an incident of this type.

Cobalt is a critical component of lithium batteries, which are used in technologies such as mobile phones and electric cars. The Democratic Republic of Congo is the world's largest producer of cobalt, but the industry is notoriously unregulated, with repeated reports of widespread forced labour, often of children, of workers being exposed to hazardous chemicals, and environmental destruction. Most of the extracted cobalt is exported to China, where it is used to manufacture electrical goods. 

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At least 26 dead in flooding and landslides in the Vale do Aço metropolitan area of Minas Gerais State, Brazil.

At least 26 people have died, and several more are missing, after a series of floods and landslide events hit the Vale do Aço metropolitan area of Minas Gerais State, Brazil, on Sunday 12 and Monday 13 January 2025. Nine of the fatalies, including a nine-year-old boy, occurred when a landslide in the Betânia neighbourhood of the city of Ipatinga, where a landslide swept along a steeply inclined street, destroying a number of homes. Other fatalities, including in at least two further children, were caused by landslides in the Betânia, Canaã, and Vila Celeste neighbourhoods of the city, and another in the city of Santana do Paraíso, to the north of Ipatinga. The events followed several days of heavy precipitation in the area, with 326 mm of rain falling between Saturday 11 and Monday 13 January, including 80 mm in an hour on Saturday night. Landslides are a common problem after severe weather events, as excess pore water pressure can overcome cohesion in soil and sediments, allowing them to flow like liquids. Approximately 90% of all landslides are caused by heavy rainfall.

A rescue worker searching through debris following a landslide in the city of Ipatinga. Minas Gerais Fire Department. 

Southern Brazil has a rainy season that lasts from October to March, with peak rains from mid-November to mid-January, however, this year's rains have been exceptionally strong. Brazil has suffered a string of flood-related disasters in recent years, most notably in 2011, when over 800 people died. The country has a rapidly growing population, with little effective urban planning, which has led to sprawling urban developments springing up with little thought to natural hazards, and in particular poorer neighbourhoods often expanding up unstable hillsides, with the result that when floods occur (which is not unusual) communities are often quickly overwhelmed.

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Two-year-old girl killed by landslide in Catbalogan City on Samar Island, Philippines.

A two-year-old girl has been killed and three other people have been injured after a landslide destroyed a house in the Barangay Basiao area of Catbalogan City on Samar Island, Philippines. The incident happened late in the evening of Sunday 29 December 2024, following several days of rain in the area.  Landslides are a common problem after severe weather events, as excess pore water pressure can overcome cohesion in soil and sediments, allowing them to flow like liquids. Approximately 90% of all landslides are caused by heavy rainfall. The three people injured are described as  35-year-old man, a 30-year-old-woman, and a baby girl, who were members of the family living in the house. A neighbouring house was also damaged in the incident.

The remains of a house destroyed by a landslide in Catbalogan City on 29 December 2024. RPN DYKC Cebu.

Residents of nearby homes have been evacuated while the situation is assessed, and local government units are also carrying out assessments, and where necessary further evacuations, in other areas which may be at risk of landslips. Much of the island of Samar is currently suffering froom flooding, associated with the Northern Monsoon.

Monsoons are tropical sea breezes triggered by heating of the land during the warmer part of the year (summer). Both the land and sea are warmed by the Sun, but the land has a lower ability to absorb heat, radiating it back so that the air above landmasses becomes significantly warmer than that over the sea, causing the air above the land to rise and drawing in water from over the sea; since this has also been warmed it carries a high evaporated water content, and brings with it heavy rainfall. In the tropical dry season the situation is reversed, as the air over the land cools more rapidly with the seasons, leading to warmer air over the sea, and thus breezes moving from the shore to the sea (where air is rising more rapidly) and a drying of the climate.

Diagrammatic representation of wind and rainfall patterns in a tropical monsoon climate. Geosciences/University of Arizona.

Southeast Asia has two distinct Monsoon Seasons, with a Northeast Monsoon driven by winds from  the South China Sea during the Southern Hemisphere Summer and a Southwest Monsoon driven by winds from the southern Indian Ocean in the Northern Hemisphere Summer. Such a double Monsoon Season is common close to the equator, where the Sun is highest overhead around the equinoxes and lowest on the horizons around the solstices, making the solstices the coolest part of the year and the equinoxes the hottest.

The winds that drive the Northeast and Southwest Monsoons in Southeast Asia. Mynewshub.

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Ten-year-old girl killed in mudslide in North Yorkshire, UK.

A ten-year-old girl has been killed by a mudslide while on a forest walk at Carlton-in-Cleveland on the edge of the North York Moors National Park in North Yorkshire, England, on Wednesday 22 May 2024. Leah Harrison from Darlington, was on a week-long residential school trip to the Carlton Adventure activity centre to celebrate the completion of SAT Tests (Standardised Assessment Tests, or SATs, are national assessments that are administered by primary schools in the UK), when the incident happened. An investigation into the event is being carried out by North Yorkshire Police and the Health and Safety Executive.

Leah Harrison (10), killed by a mudslide at Carlton-in-Cleveland in North Yorkshire on 22 May 2024. North Yorkshire Police.

The incident happened following a period of heavy rainfall in the area, with as much rain falling in the 12 hours prior to the incident as typically fall in a month in the area. Landslides are a common problem after severe weather events, as excess pore water pressure can overcome cohesion in soil and sediments, allowing them to flow like liquids. Approximately 90% of all landslides are caused by heavy rainfall. A Yellow Weather Alert had been issued at the time of the accident, the lowest level of such alerts in the UK, which would lead people to expect some disruption to travel or outdoor events, but not significant danger.

The UK has been suffering a series of extreme weather events, including flooding and tornadoes, driven by exceptionally high temperatures over the Atlantic Ocean. As the air is heated the air pressure drops and the air rises, causing new air to rush in from outside the forming storm zone. If this zone is sufficiently large, then it will be influenced by the Coriolis Effect, which loosely speaking means the winds closer to the equator will be faster than those further away, causing the storm to rotate, clockwise in the northern hemisphere and anticlockwise in the southern hemisphere.

The high temperatures experienced in the past year have been linked to a combination of anthropogenic global warming, driven by emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, with an El Niño - Southern Oscillation climate system over the Pacific Ocean, a natural phenomenon which also tends to drive temperatures upwards. However, the El Niño system appears to have been weakening over the past months, with sea surface temperatures over the eastern equatorial Pacific actually being lower than the average for 1990-2020, while global temperatures have continued to rise, suggesting that the El Niño system may be playing as large a role in driving this year's high temperatures as previously assumed.

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