Landslide at quarry in Haryana State, India, kills at least four.

At least four people have died, three required hospital treatment, and there are fears that several more may be buried under rubble, following a landslide at a quarry in the Bhiwani District of Haryana State, India, on Saturday 1 January 2022. The incident happened at about 8.00 am local time, while the men were in vehicles driving from one part of the site to another. The landslide is thought to have been triggered by blasting with explosives. Three of the deceased have been named as Sanjay Kumar from Jind, Toffan Singh from Jharkand, and Vijender Kumar from Toshan.

 

Rescue workers at a quarry in Haryana State, India, following a landslip which killed at least 4 people on 1 January 2022. Manoj Dhaka/Hindustan Times.

Mining had been restarted at the quarry on Friday 31 December 2021 (the day before the incident), following a two month closure imposed by the National Green Tribunal, which had heard evidence that mining was being carried out at the mine in an unsafe and unscientific manner, with the mine having been sunk to a depth that was safer than had been permitted and no dust suppression measures in place. Mining was reinstated following a meeting of the tribunal on Thursday 30 December, but it is unclear if any new evidence was presented, not what measures had been taken to alleviate the concerns of safety inspectors.

 

Rescue workers at a quarry in Haryana State, India, following a landslip which killed at least 4 people on 1 January 2022. Press Trust of India.

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Landlide kills three workers at a quarry in Odisha State, India.

Three workers, including two women, have died following a landslide at a quarry near the village of Bhatakamarada in the Ganjam District of Odisha State, India, on Tuesday 28 April 2020. The immediate cause of the landslip is unclear, though the incident is being investigated by the local police, who reportedly believe that the event may have been triggered by severe 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 approximate location of the Bhatakamarada Quarry. Google Maps.

The areas around Bhatakamarada is home to a number of small quarries extracting rock and sand for the construction industry. These typically operate by blasting the rock with explosives before removing it with hand tools or light machinery. Such mining operations tend to be small scale, locally owned and poorly regulated, with the industry known to have low safety standards and prone to illegal activities such as unlicensed extraction (which usually also implies no outside safety inspections).

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Three killed in Fiji landslide.

Three people have died following a landslide at a quarry operated by Island Quarries at Suva on the southeast coast of the island of Viti Levu, Fiji, on Friday 20 March 2020. The dead men have been identified as David Johnson, the managing director of the quarry, Seci Roko, the quarry manager, and Aporosa Ratu, a mechanic employed at the site. The event happened amid heavy rains and flooding associated with a low-pressure system that swept across the islands. 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.

Rescue workers with the remains of a vehicle crushed by a landslide that killed three people at a quarry in Fiji on Friday 20 March 2020. Two of the bodies were found adjacent to the vehicle. Fiji Sun.

Fiji has a tropical climate, with a wet season that runs from November to April, with peak rainfall in March, when over 360 mm of rain is usual, and a dry season that lasts from May to October. However, the dry season is not completely arid, typically still receiving about 150 mm of rain per month, and this year has been exceptionally wet, with some of the heaviest rain ever recorded in the islands falling in the past week, and local authorities are warning there is a danger of further landslips and flooding.

 The approximate location of the 20 March 2020 Suva landslide. Google Maps.

Low presure systems are caused by solar energy heating the air above the oceans, which causes the air to rise leading to an inrush of air. If this happens over a large enough area the inrushing air will start to circulate, as the rotation of the Earth causes the winds closer to the equator to move eastwards compared to those further away (the Coriolis Effect). This leads to tropical storms rotating clockwise in the southern hemisphere and anticlockwise in the northern hemisphere. These storms tend to grow in strength as they move across the ocean and lose it as they pass over land (this is not completely true: many tropical weather systems peter out without reaching land due to wider atmospheric patterns), since the land tends to absorb solar energy while the sea reflects it.

The low pressure above tropical storms causes water to rise there by ~1 cm for every millibar drop in pressure, leading to a storm surge that can overwhelm low-lying coastal areas, while at the same time the heat leads to high levels of evaporation from the sea - and subsequently high levels of rainfall. This can cause additional flooding on land, as well as landslides.

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Landslides at limestone quarries kill at least 74 in the Philippines.

Landslides at two limestone quarries have killed at least 74 people in the Philippines this week. At Itogon in Benguet Province on Luzon Island the bodies of 45 people have been recovered and 57 more are missing after a landslide struck an accomodation block where people were sheltering from Typhoon Mangkhut (referred to as Typhoon Ompong in the Philippines) on Saturday 15 September 2018. Despite the large number of people still missing, rescue operations have had to be severly cut back following warnings that the site was still unstable by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, who raised concenrs that the low probability of finding any further survivors were outweighed by the high probability of further landslips at the site, endangering the lives of rescue workers.

Rescue workers remove a body from the scene of a landslide at a limestone quarry at Itogon in Beguet Province, the Philippines, on Tuesday 18 September 2018. Ted Aljibe/AFP.

At Naga on Cebu Island a second landslide, again associated with a limestone quarry, struck two villages on Thursday 20 September, burrying over 20 homes. Twenty nine bodies have now been recovered following this incident, and it is feared that more than fifty further victims could be burried beneath the rubble. 

Rescue workers at the scene of a landside at Naga on Cebu Island, the Philippines, earlier this week. Bullit Marquez/Associated Press.

Both incidents have been linked to heavy rains associated with Typhoon Mangkhut. 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. These events have prompted the Philippine Government to halt mining operations across a large area of the country while safety checks are carried out.

Tropical storms are caused by the warming effect of the Sun over tropical seas. As the air warms it expands, causing a drop in air pressure, and rises, causing air from outside the area to rush in to replace it. If this happens over a sufficiently wide area then the inrushing winds will be affected by centrifugal forces caused by the Earth's rotation (the Coriolis effect). This means that winds will be deflected clockwise in the northern hemisphere and anti-clockwise in the southern hemisphere, eventually creating a large, rotating Tropical Storm. They have different names in different parts of the world, with those in the northwest Pacific being referred to as typhoons.

 Typhoon Mangkhut imaged by the Japan Meteorological Agency’s Himawari-8 satellite on 14 September 2018. /Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere/Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch/Colorado State University/Wikimedia Commons.

Despite the obvious danger of winds of this speed, which can physically blow people, and other large objects, away as well as damaging buildings and uprooting trees, the real danger from these storms comes from the flooding they bring. Each drop millibar drop in air-pressure leads to an approximate 1 cm rise in sea level, with big tropical storms capable of causing a storm surge of several meters. This is always accompanied by heavy rainfall, since warm air over the ocean leads to evaporation of sea water, which is then carried with the storm. These combined often lead to catastrophic flooding in areas hit by tropical storms.

Typhoon Mangkhut is considered to be the most severe tropical storm of 2018, and is attributed with the deaths of 81 people in the Philippines, not counting those at the Naga quarry or any unknown deaths at the Itogon quarry, as well as four in Guangdong Province, China and one in Taiwan. It also caused extensive damage in Maccau and Hong Kong,  where over 240 people were injured, but no fatalities have been reported. 

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Landslip at Mizoram quarry kills four.

Four people, including two minors, have died in a landslip at a quarry on the outskirts of the city of Aizawl in Mizoram State, India. The incident happened at about 7.30 am local time on Saturday 12 May 2018, when the four were working at the quarry, which is reported to be owned by local businessman John Halliday. The deceased have been named as Munga, 40, Linda Zodinpuii, 32, and her daughters Linda Hmingthianghlimi, 14, and Lalremzovi Zodinpuii, 10.

Rescue workers searching the scene of a landslip at a quarry in Aizawl. Mizoram, on 12 May 2018. Henry Khojol/Telegraph India.

Mizoram does not have a well developed mining industry, although it is thought to have deposits of metals, coal and other potentially commercial deposits, as it is remote from the main centres of industry in India, making it hard to export the produce of any large-scale mining operation, and presenting difficulties obtaining reliable power for such an industry. However a number of products are excavated locally, such as sandstone and limestone for use in construction and clay for the ceramics industry. As such mining operations that do exist tend to be small scale, locally owned and poorly regulated, with the industry known to have low safety standards and prone to illegal activities such as unlicensed extraction (which usually also implies no outside safety inspections) and the employment of minors (the employment of children under 14 in the mining industry is illegal in India.

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Landslide kills three in Chittagong District, Bangladesh.

Three people including a child, have died in a landslide in the Chittagong District of Chittagong Division, Bangladesh, on Saturday 30 December 2017. The three, named as Mohamed Didar, 38, Amir Ali, 37, and Mohamed Sakib, 10, were engaged in hill-cutting (removing soil from the side of a hill, usually for sale), when a section of the hillside collapsed onto them, crushing them to death, at about 2.30 pm local time. Several other individuals are reported to have been involved in the hill-cutting operation, but fled the scene without offering assistance.

The approximate location of the 30 December 2017 Chittagong landslide. Google Maps.

Hill cutting without a specific permit is illegal in Bangladesh, but has become a major industry in the Chittagong Hills, where the law is widely flouted. The unregulated nature of this industry means that few, if any, safety measures tend to be implemented, and accidents are frequent. The industry also has major environmental impacts, destroying farmland and making the area mote prone to landslips and flash floods that destroy homes and infrastructure. The majority of those involved in the actual hill cutting are poor farmers and day labourers, with limited access to other means of income, but the profits from the industry go to wealthier individuals involved in the sale of the soil, and there is speculation that the weak law-enforcement in the are is due to the involvement of senior political figures in the industry.

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Woman killed in landslide at illegal quarry in Sylhet Division, Bangladesh.

A woman has died and three other people have been injured in a rockfall at an illegal quarry in the Sylhet District of Sylhet Division in Bangladesh, on Monday 13 November 2017. The incident happened at about 9.30 am local time, as the workers were digging out rocks from a bank of Piyain River. The deceased woman has been identified as Shompa Das, 17, from Netrokona, while the injured persons were Jyoti Bikash, Dipto Sarkar and Ajit Sarkar. This incident brings the number of known deaths in such quarries in Bangladesh to 29 so far this year and eight so far this month.

The approximate location of the 13 November 2017 Sylhet Landslide. Google Maps.

Illegal quarrying for stone used in the building industry is a major problem in Sylhet, with hills and river beds the usual targets. The situation has caused major environmental issues in the region, with a number of hills having disappeared completely. The illegal nature of the quarries adds to the dangerous nature of the work; the quarries not only lack any form of health and safety management, they are often also active in the hours of darkness without lighting in order to avoid detection.

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