Two confirmed deaths following failureof mine tailings pond in Bolivia.

Two people have been confirmed dead, four people are being trated in jospital, and 47 homes have been destroyed following the collapse of a mine tailings pond in the Potosí Department of Bolivia. The incident happened at Laguna Kenko in the Llallagua District, on the Bolivian Altiplano, at about 5.00 am on Sunday 16 March 2025, following heavy rains in the area, associated with the local rainy season, and led to hundreds of tonnes of a grey, muddy slurry washing through the community of Andavilque. 

Part of the community of Andavilque in Potosí Department, Bolivia, covered by mud following the failure of a mine tailings pond on Sunday 16 March 2025. Agencia Boliviana de Información.

The mine tailings pond was associated with the Siglo XX Mine, which opened in 1900 and closed in 1987, being at its peak the most important tin mine on the Bolivian Altiplano. The mine was a centre of union activity in Bolivia, and in 1967 was the site of the San Juan Massacre, in which the Bolivian military shot more than 90 men, women, and children at close range, killing at least 20, in rsponse to a threat to strike by miners, an event considered to be the worst massacre in Bolivian history. Although the mine itself has closed, mine tailings at the pond have been worked by the Cooperativa Multiactiva 'Catavi Siglo XX Ltda' since 1994, and the tailings pond was associated with this operation.

Tailings ponds are used to store sediment-laden waters from mines; such waters typically contain a high proportion of fine silt and clay particles, which take time to settle out of the water. The resulting water may be fairly clean, or may contain other pollutants (typically acids, either generated by the local geology or used in the mining process), and need further treatment. The waters of the Laguna Kenko were acidic, and contained dissolved tin, lead, and arsenic, although these were not at levels as high as in solid waste at the site.

The Bolivian Rainy Season, typically lasts from November to March, driven by high evaporation over the Pacific Ocean during the southern summer, which falls as rain when air currents coming from the ocean are pushed upwards as they encounter the Andes Mountains, causing the air to cool and lose its moisture, with peak rainfall in January and February. 

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Abandoned mine discovered in Redruth, Cornwall.

A disused mine tunnel, thought to be over a hundred years old, has been found in the former mining town of Redruth in Cornwall, UK. The tunnel was found beneath land attached to a house by local expert Stuart Dann of survey company Mining Eye Ltd., beneath a manhole cover on the property, and is thought to present no threat to the house or any other nearby property. The accessible tunnel is about 1.6 km in length, although it was presumably once much longer as it has partially collapsed preventing further below-ground exploration. 

Previously unknown mining tunnel discovered in Redruth, Cornwall. Stuart Dann/Cornwall Live.

Old mine-workings are hardly unusual in Redruth, the town was once the richest centre of tin and copper mining in the world. However, the new tunnel appears to be part of a fairly large mining operation, the discovery of which is unusual. Stuart Dann, who has now bought the property on which the mine tunnel is situated, intends to carry out exploratory drilling work on the site to determine the extent of the tunnelling.

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Sinkhole devours garden in St Ives, Cornwall.

A giant sinkhole opened up in the garden of a Cornish pensioner on Saturday 31 October 2015. The whole appeared in the garden of Kathleen Angel (93) of the Carbis Bay area of St Ives, is thought to be about 30 m deep.

The 31 October 2015 St Ives sinkhole. Western Morning News.

Sinkholes are generally caused by water eroding soft limestone or unconsolidated deposits from beneath, causing a hole that works its way upwards and eventually opening spectacularly at the surface. Where there are unconsolidated deposits at the surface they can infill from the sides, apparently swallowing objects at the surface, including people, without trace.

On this occasion the sinkhole opened up after a work team on a nearby construction site broke a water main, triggering a flood that affected several nearby homes. This apparently caused the top of a disused mine shaft hidden beneath the garden to cave in, exposing the shaft beneath. St Ives, like many areas of Cornwall has had a mining industry for hundreds of years, principally producing tin and copper, but also lead, zinc, silver, uranium, arsenic, Cassiterite, Chalcopyrite, Malachite, Azurite and Pitchblende, and many disused shafts are known to lie beneath the town, with occasional incidents in which shafts are opened up unexpectedly by natural events.

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Magnitude 1.0 Earthquake off the coast of Newquay, Cornwall.                              The British Geological Survey recorded a Magnitude 1.0 Earthquake at a depth of 6 km slightly off the coast of the resort of Newquay in Cornwall, at about 0.50 pm...

Series of Earthquakes of the south coast of Cornwall.                                                  The British Geological Survey recorded a series of small Earthquakes off the south coast of Cornwall (about 45 km to the southeast of Falmouth) on...

 

Earthquake off the coast of Cornwall. The British Geological Survey recorded a Magnitude 1.8 Earthquake at a depth of 8 km under the English Channel, roughly 60 km o the southeast of Falmouth in Cornwall, slightly before 11.15 am British

 

 

 

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