What Caused the 2013 Bingham Canyon Mine Landslide?

The Short Answer

On April 10, 2013, the northeast wall of Utah’s Bingham Canyon copper mine collapsed in two massive slides, moving 165 million tons of rock — making it the largest non-volcanic landslide in modern North American history — and not a single worker was hurt because the mine had predicted it and evacuated in advance.

What Is Bingham Canyon Mine?

Located about 25 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, the Bingham Canyon Mine is one of the largest open-pit copper mines in the world. Operated by Rio Tinto’s Kennecott Utah Copper, the pit descends more than half a mile into the earth — roughly 3,180 feet deep — and stretches nearly three miles across. It has been in continuous operation since 1906 and has produced more copper than any other mine in history.

Why Did the Wall Collapse?

The collapse came down to a combination of geology and decades of excavation catching up with each other.

Deep within the mine’s northeast wall ran a set of naturally weak rock layers known as the Manefay beds — sedimentary layers that happened to tilt directly toward the open pit. Year after year of mining gradually undercut those layers, removing the support that had been holding them in place. By early 2013, the geometry of the slope had become critical: the rock above those weak layers had no solid foundation left to rest on.

Gravity did the rest.

How Did the Mine Know It Was Coming?

This is where the story becomes remarkable. Bingham Canyon Mine used slope-monitoring radar — a system that bounces radio waves off the rock face thousands of times per day and compares returning signals to detect outward movement as small as a fraction of an inch.

For months leading up to the collapse, engineers had been watching the northeast wall slowly creep outward. By the morning of April 10, 2013, the wall was moving at roughly two inches per day — and the rate was accelerating. That acceleration was the critical signal. Engineers recognized the pattern of an imminent failure and ordered a full evacuation of the sector.

Hours later, their prediction proved correct.

What Happened on April 10, 2013?

At approximately 9:30 p.m. on April 10, the northeast wall gave way in the first of two slides. About an hour and a half later, a second, larger collapse followed. Together, the two events displaced 165 million tons of rock, pushing debris up to nearly two miles across the mine floor.

The scale was staggering — comparable to moving a mountain. Damage to equipment and infrastructure ran into hundreds of millions of dollars, and the shape of the pit was permanently altered.

Yet every worker was safe.

How Quickly Did the Mine Recover?

The recovery was as impressive as the prediction. Despite the catastrophic scale of the slide:

• Ore production resumed just 17 days after the collapse.
• A new haul road was rebuilt in seven months — six months ahead of the original schedule.
• The mine continued operating and remains active today.

The rapid recovery reflected both the mine’s resources and the preparedness that had already been built into its response planning.

Why Does This Event Matter?

The 2013 Bingham Canyon landslide stands as one of the clearest examples of geotechnical monitoring saving lives at industrial scale. The technology existed, the engineers trusted the data, and leadership acted on it. The result was a zero-casualty outcome from what could have been one of the deadliest mining disasters in U.S. history.

It also demonstrated that even the most destructive natural failures can be survived — and recovered from — when science is applied rigorously and early enough.