The biggest non-volcanic mudslide in North America

• The biggest non-volcanic mudslide in North America

This story is so full of a considerable number of unusual facts. Judge for yourself, the largest non-volcanic landslide nature in North America, took place in the largest mine in the world.

Contrary to many encyclopedic data, the world's largest man-made mining site is Mine Bingham Canyon Mine, located in the US state of Utah. Where ore is mined for over 110 years. The Bingham Canyon Mine is extracted a quarter consumed copper country.

Such volumes for this amount of time, led to the formation of a giant crater about 970 meters wide and about four kilometers long. With the growth of the "pit", operators, inspectors noted the fact that the walls of the mine becoming increasingly unstable. Then the seismic sensors have been installed. the risk of the collapse of the north-east "wall" was recorded in early 2013.

Fortunately, before the two devastating landslide waves, the evacuation was carried out. The duration of each avalanche was about fifteen minutes. The volume of the landslide was more than 65 million cubic meters.

This amount would be enough to completely cover the Central Park in New York City 20-meter layer of soil. The power of the landslide was so great that seismologists recorded it as an earthquake at around 2, 5 on the Richter scale.

By the way, it was the first in the history of the landslide, which actually became a source of a dozen earthquakes. As a rule, everything is quite the opposite.