Google Earth Blog

The amazing things about Google Earth


bingham canyon mine

The best of Google Earth for June, 2013

The end of June is nearly upon us. Here are some of the highlights from the month:

We took a look at Colin Hazelhurt’s “Sailing Alone Around the World” set of tours, which he continues to create each week.

We showed you fresh imagery from the devastation following the tornado in Moore, Oklahoma.

Google pushed out some nice updates to their ocean map, as well as fresh 3D Imagery in a variety of cities around the world and quite a lot of fresh Street View imagery.

NASA’s Earth Observatory shared some amazing imagery from the Bingham Canyon Mine landslide.

We showed you some of our favorite tips for making Google Earth work better on your computer.

Google took Street View to the top of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, then they updated the base imagery to look even more amazing from space.

If you’re looking for more areas to explore, these 25,000 ancient sites should keep you busy.

What was your favorite Google Earth story in June?

The Bingham Canyon Mine landslide in Google Earth

Back in April, the Bingham Canyon Mine was home to the largest non-volcanic landslide in the history of North America, when nearly 70 million cubic meters of dirt and rock collapsed into the pit.  The NASA Earth Observatory website has posted imagery of the post-collapse site, which can be seen here:

bingham

You can view that imagery in Google Earth by loading this KML file.

Fortunately, because of the forethought of mine ownership, no one was injured or killed in the collapse:

The company that operates the mine had installed an interferometric radar system months before the event that made it possible to detect subtle changes in the stability of the pit’s walls. Signs of increasing strain prompted the mine’s operators to issue a press release seven hours before the collapse, with a warning that a landslide was imminent. All workers were evacuated and production had stopped before the landslide occurred; as a result, no one was injured.

You can read more about the collapse and the imagery on the NASA Earth Observatory site.