Construction landslide in India

The online newspaper Mangalorean today carries here some rather dramatic pictures of the aftermath of a landslide in Kavoor, India that buried and killed two labourers. An oversight of the accident is provided in this image from that site:


The report says that the accident occurred during the construction of a retaining wall using a JCB. Note in the image that deep red colour of the soils, indicating high levels of weathering. The properties of such materials are notoriously difficult to predict, meaning that failures are common. The collapse here looks to have been small, butit does not take much material to kill a person once they are buried. Such accidents are probably far more common that we realise.