Monday, December 21, 2015

Development Waste Leads To Massive Chinese Landslide

Quartz:
A massive landslide rocked an industrial park in China’s southern city Shenzhen on Sunday (Dec. 20), burying 33 buildings and leaving at least 85 people missing by Monday. Authorities said the collapse of a huge mound of soil and construction waste caused the disaster. The landslide might have also led to an explosion along a nearby stretch of natural gas pipeline, state news agency Xinhua reported...
The landslide occurred at around 11:40am on Sunday (local time) in the Hengtaiyu industrial park in northwestern Shenzhen’s Guangming New District. It deposited more than 100,000 square meters (1.1 million square feet) of debris at the site, Xinhua reported. A sea of brown soil—with an average thickness of six meters (20 feet)—has covered an area of more than 60,000 square meters, geological experts told Xinhua.
The mound of construction waste that collapsed had become too large and its angles too steep, the ministry of land and resources said Sunday evening on its Sina Weibo account (link in Chinese, registration required)....
Shenzhen, a mainland manufacturing hub near Hong Kong, has been aggressively building new housing estates, subway lines, and other projects. The amount of the municipality’s waste mud has increased significantly in recent years, expanding to 30 million cubic meters (1.1 billion cubic feet) last year from 9.5 million cubic meters in 2007.
The nine dumping areas currently licensed by the city—which includes the one that burst yesterday—have a combined capacity of about 50 million cubic meters, local media report (link in Chinese). Many companies have reportedly been dumping waste mud at roadsides and illegal sites.
That is a massive landslide.  Why in the hell would they be stockpiling that much soil in giant waste piles?  That doesn't make any sense to me.

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