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| USA News video on the slide: http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=24748916 |
The Bingham Canyon is an enormous porphyry copper mine in Utah. The landslide that
washed over the terraced steps of a mining pit nearly a mile deep left only the
tip of one giant electric-powered shovel poking out of the dirt. It will take
months for the major U.S. copper mine to recover from the devastating
landslide, even though it had been anticipated by the company and no workers were in the mine at the time of the slide as they were kept away. It ran farther
out than expected, burying equipment that had been staged there for a dig-out. Kennecott (the owners), which will work from a stockpile, will
run out of copper in months and has cut its production goal for 2013 by half.
The company has asked 2,100 workers to take vacation or unpaid leave, but few
are doing so yet. The breathtaking pit, now barren of activity. It spans nearly
three miles wide, ringed by snow-capped mountains. Company officials say 165
million tons of waste rock and dirt slid down a wall of the pit. The slide
progressed in three pulses over three hours down multiple paths instead of
falling all at once, nearly filling the bottom of the pit, registering magnitude of 2.4. http://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2013/05/06/analysing-the-bingham-canyon-mine-landslide-part-2-the-landslide-track/
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