The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides.
In the last 24 hours, two new videos have emerged showing the 13 February 2024 landslide at Çöpler Mine in Turkey. Once again, these have been widely posted to social media.
This was clearly a lucky escape for the drivers. The video captures the early part of the failure sequence, which was rapid and violent. It is notable that the Çöpler Mine landslide once again appears to be quite dry, which raises questions about the failure mechanism.
The second appears at the start of this news report about the landslide:-
This appears to show the initiation of the failure. The footage is intriguing – it seems to show a large section of slope failing as a single unit. The failure plane seems to be close to the road, below which seems to be terrain with well-developed vegetation. The operators indicated that the failure occurred in a leach heap, but it would be unusual to have such a structure built on natural topography.
The very large scale of the failure is clear, as is the rather complex structure. Once again, the mass appears to be quite dry.
In other news, four people have been arrested in connection with the landslide. These are reported to be senior employees at the Çöpler Mine. Meanwhile, the operation to recover those missing continues. News reports indicate that these people were working on the surface of the area struck by the landslide.
There is also some conventional aerial imagery available of the site now. This seems to indicate that the landslide occurred at [39.4284, 38.5426]. Interestingly, this is the area marked as Çöpler Mine Heap Leach Pad Phases I-IV, which are not recent. Google Earth imagery shows these being developed in the loosely defined period between about 2012 and 2016.
There is much about this failure that remains enigmatic, so I hope that a proper investigation will be undertaken and published.