165 Million Tons Buried Every Truck in the Deepest Mine (2013)

The internet says 14 Caterpillar trucks were buried at Bingham Canyon Mine in 2013. We checked. The trucks were Komatsu 930Es. There were thirteen. And the three rope shovels buried underneath were P&H 4100Cs worth $45 million each. On April 10, 2013, the northeast wall of the deepest open-pit mine on Earth collapsed in two rock avalanches 95 minutes apart. Peak velocity hit 190 mph. 165 million tons of rock buried 95% of the pit floor — including every piece of equipment the geologists had moved to a "safe zone." Zero deaths. Zero injuries. The prediction was perfect. The runout model was wrong by a factor of nine. 0:00 The internet gets the equipment wrong 1:31 The Manefay Fault and six weeks on the job 5:29 170 mph in total darkness 8:37 17-day restart and the tunnel that survived 10:58 The satellite data nobody plugged in Sources: GSA Today (Pankow et al. 2014), Moore et al. JGR Earth Surface 2017, Utah Geological Survey, Rio Tinto SEC filings, Brad Ross "Rise to the Occasion" (SME 2017), NASA Earth Observatory, Engineering & Mining Journal. Every fact is verified. Every number is real. #BinghamCanyon #Kennecott #Mining #HeavyEquipment #Landslide #Komatsu930E #CopperMine #RioTinto #MiningDisaster #MachineryVault