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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