The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides.
On 24 May 2024 at 2:56 am local time, a catastrophic landslide occurred close to Yambali in Enga Province, Papua New Guinea, at: [-5.382, 143.365]. I wrote about this rockslide at the time, and it generated considerable media interest. The site is hard to access, so details have been hard to track down.
There is a good new paper (Li et al. 2025) in the journal Landslides, sadly behind a paywall (but the contact details of the first author are in the link above), which provides an initial review of the event.
One of the reasons that this landslide attracted so much attention was the reported loss of life, which in some cases was up to 2,000 people. As I noted at the time, this was highly unlikely in a rural area. Li et al. (2025) have mapped the houses destroyed by the event (n=29), suggesting that the likely loss of life was in the region of 200.
Whilst it was spectacular, the landslide at Yambali was not huge – Li et al. (2025) have measured the runout distance as 520 m, with a maximum width of 140 m. The volume was about 500,000 m3. The failure occurred on a steep slope that is bisected by a fault, consisting of “relatively low-strength, highly weathered quartz sandstone and limestone”. The authors note that there were smaller failures on the slope before the main event, suggesting that this was a progressive event. No direct trigger has been identified, but the six months period before the failure occurred had unusually high levels of precipitation.
The international interest in this landslide has now ebbed away, leaving the local population to deal with the aftermath. The Planet image below, captured last week, shows the site:-
Planet image of the 24 May 2024 landslide near to Yambali in Papua New Guinea. Image copyright
Planet, used with permission. Image dated 18 March 2025.
A new road has been constructed to bypass the site, presumably to reopen access to the mine. Unfortunately, this is likely to leave those living along the original alignment even more isolated than before.
Reference
Li, Z., Li, W., Xu, Q. et al. 2025. Brief report on the catastrophic landslide in Papua New Guinea on May 24, 2024. Landslides. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-025-02511-0
Planet Team 2025. Planet Application Program Interface: In Space for Life on Earth. San Francisco, CA. https://www.planet.com/
Return to The Landslide Blog homepage
Text © 2023. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.