Rainfall-triggered rockfall on Highway 18 in San Bernardino County has blocked lanes and damaged barriers along a steep cut slope, following weeks of intense winter storms that saturated highly fractured granitic and metamorphic rock. Caltrans geotechnical crews report multiple failures from tension cracks and oversteepened slopes above the roadway, with debris reaching the carriageway and impacting existing rockfall fences. Engineers are now assessing options including expanded rock bolting, additional draped mesh, improved surface and subsurface drainage, and revised slope scaling protocols ahead of further atmospheric river events.

A catastrophic breach on the Llangollen Canal near New Mills Lift Bridge, Whitchurch has drained a long pound and damaged the embankment, despite recent routine inspections reporting no visible defects. Engineers from the Canal & River Trust are now investigating potential failure mechanisms, including internal erosion, leakage paths and historic construction weaknesses in the canal lining and embankment core. The incident raises immediate questions over current visual inspection regimes for ageing UK canal earthworks and whether more frequent intrusive or remote condition monitoring is needed on high-consequence reaches.

Lineside monitoring systems on parts of Britain’s rail network may fail to detect embankment or cutting slope movements during extreme rainfall, the Rail Accident Investigation Branch has warned following the 3 November passenger train derailment near Shap, Cumbria. The warning concerns remote condition monitoring equipment installed to trigger alerts for ground instability, which did not prevent the derailment. Geotechnical and asset engineers are being urged to review sensor siting, trigger thresholds and system performance in severe weather, particularly on high-risk slopes.

Soil nailing has been selected as the primary long-term stabilisation method for a failing section of Swanage seafront, with works expected to cost at least £4.5M. The scheme will address ongoing ground movement and slope instability affecting coastal infrastructure and promenade assets, where traditional retaining solutions have proved less viable. Designers and contractors will need to manage marine exposure, corrosion protection for nails and facing, and construction sequencing to maintain public access along this constrained shoreline.

Railway managers have been warned by the Rail Accident Investigation Branch that Network Rail’s lineside slope monitoring systems may fail to give usable alerts during rapid failures, after an Avanti West Coast train derailed at around 83 mph near Shap Summit on 3 November 2025 when it struck landslip debris. Remote sensors on steel spikes at 2 m spacing recorded sub‑10 mm movements—below the 10–30 mm “green” alert threshold—before being rapidly buried, losing wireless signal and generating no alarm to control. The landslip followed heavy, sustained rainfall that overwhelmed a cutting‑slope drainage channel, and RAIB has urged duty holders to urgently review and, where needed, mitigate these monitoring limitations.

A man-made embankment on the Llangollen Canal near Whitchurch, Shropshire, failed in the early hours of Monday, creating a large breach that rapidly drained a several‑kilometre pound and triggered a major incident response. The failure occurred on a raised canal section over low-lying farmland, with water overtopping and eroding the embankment before a full breach developed, flooding adjacent fields and damaging access tracks. Canal & River Trust engineers have isolated the affected reach with stop planks and are assessing embankment stability, seepage paths and repair options under constrained access conditions.

BHP faces a demand for at least £189 million ($253 million) in legal costs in the UK after being found liable for the 2015 Mariana tailings dam collapse at the Samarco iron ore mine in Minas Gerais, which killed 19 people and caused Brazil’s worst environmental disaster. The claim covers legal fees plus about £44 million spent on walk-in centres and call centre staff to communicate with roughly 620,000 affected people, and sits alongside a £36 billion ($48 billion) damages claim set for trial in October 2026. BHP is seeking permission to appeal, calling the costs “shocking” and pushing to defer any ruling on costs until after the damages phase.

Scour is now confirmed by Moray Council as the likely principal cause of the Garmouth Viaduct collapse over the River Spey on 14 December, after an abrupt change in the river’s flow path is thought to have undermined the masonry or concrete support piers. Engineers are assessing how localised bed erosion and altered hydraulic conditions around the pier foundations triggered the failure. The case will sharpen scrutiny of scour risk assessments, real-time river monitoring and foundation protection measures on older rail and footbridges in dynamic gravel-bed rivers.

A newly built breeze block retaining wall collapsed into a deep excavation on Old Coast Guard’s Road, Poole, crushing 69-year-old steel-fixer Patrick Grant and prompting a £100,000 fine for principal contractor Matrod Frampton Limited. HSE found the wall had been backfilled before the mortar had set, there was no temporary works design for the wall or other structures, and no temporary works co-ordinator or supervisor had been appointed despite a safety report warning eight days earlier. Rescue was further delayed by reliance on an unstable ladder and the absence of an excavation emergency plan.

Contractors Bouygues Travaux Publics, Laing O’Rourke Delivery and principal contractor NNB Generation Company (HPC) Ltd have all pleaded not guilty at Bristol magistrates’ court to alleged breaches of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 on the Hinkley Point C nuclear project. The ONR prosecutions relate to a fatal incident involving site supervisor Jason Waring on 13 November 2022 and a separate 20 August 2022 accident where slinger Paul Dunne was seriously injured by a falling rebar mesh wall in a pre-fabrication yard. All matters are adjourned to Bristol Crown Court on 30 January for pre-trial review.

The 19th-century Garmouth Viaduct over the River Spey in Moray, Scotland has collapsed, exposing a decade-long failure to act on a 2014 recommendation for a full structural survey. The former rail viaduct, now used as a pedestrian and cycle crossing, had already been subject to partial closures after previous flood damage and scour concerns. The incident raises immediate questions over inspection regimes, asset management of legacy wrought-iron and masonry structures, and how local authorities prioritise intrusive surveys for ageing river crossings.

A levee breach on the Desimone levee along Washington’s Green River near Tukwila occurred under atmospheric river rainfall, with river levels peaking near 22 feet after a rapid 15‑foot rise in one week, exceeding six decades of recorded stages. The failure, a vehicle‑sized opening caused by internal erosion under prolonged high hydraulic loading, triggered flash flood warnings and evacuations for more than 45,000 residents in low‑lying areas. Emergency works using large sandbags and temporary fill stabilised the embankment, but saturated foundation soils and elevated groundwater leave wider regional levee and slope stability at risk from further storms.

Contractors will return to the M62 Ouse Bridge over the River Ouse this weekend (13–14 December) to replace a damaged expansion joint installed only a couple of years ago, following an unexpected bolt failure earlier this year. National Highways plans to complete the joint replacement under a short-duration closure to minimise disruption on this key trans-Pennine route between junctions 36 and 37. The repeat intervention on a relatively new joint raises questions over detailing, fatigue performance and inspection regimes for heavily trafficked motorway bridges.

Severe bearing deterioration on a major strategic road bridge has been found after going unnoticed for more than 15 years, raising concerns that local authorities lack sufficient in‑house bridge engineering expertise. Inspectors identified advanced damage to key support bearings, with the defect considered potentially critical to the structure’s load‑carrying capacity and long‑term serviceability. The case is prompting calls for more specialist bridge inspectors, better asset management systems, and clearer responsibilities for monitoring ageing structures on heavily trafficked routes.

A labourer working for Premier Property & Construction Limited suffered life-changing injuries after being pulled over the edge of scaffolding during an unplanned lifting operation at a Cathcart Hill refurbishment site in London on 15 April 2024, when an untested lifting accessory snagged and then released. Health & Safety Executive investigators found routine lifting was neither planned nor monitored, and untested, unsuitable lifting gear was allowed on the scaffold. Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court fined principal contractor Axis Europe Limited £640,000 and Premier Property & Construction £160,000, plus identical costs and victim surcharges.

A magnitude 7.0 earthquake near Yakutat, Alaska, has generated over 160 aftershocks in 24 hours, with shaking felt across southeastern Alaska and into Yukon and British Columbia, raising concern for ageing port, pipeline and road embankment infrastructure on soft coastal sediments. USGS reports shallow crustal rupture along the Fairweather–Queen Charlotte transform system, with peak ground accelerations locally exceeding typical design levels for older structures. Geotechnical teams are prioritising rapid reconnaissance of slope stability, liquefaction-prone deltaic deposits and critical lifelines, including fuel terminals and regional airstrips.

A newly built embankment along National Highway 66 at Mylakkadu in Kollam suddenly collapsed, trapping several vehicles including a school bus and opening deep ground fissures across the service road and adjacent plots. The failure occurred on a recently widened section of NH66, where fill had been placed to raise the carriageway above surrounding low-lying land, and eyewitnesses reported no prior signs of distress. State authorities have ordered a technical investigation into embankment design, fill quality, drainage provision and construction supervision, with traffic now diverted and the affected stretch closed.

Construction plant dealer Warwick Ward (Machinery) Ltd has entered administration after 55 years of trading, with joint administrators from Interpath appointed on 3 December 2025 and most of its 89 staff already made redundant. The Barnsley-based firm, which also operated depots in Bromsgrove and Harlow and supplied Case, Terex, Ausa, Faresin and Sunward equipment, saw performance swing from a £679,000 pre-tax profit on £51.2m sales to a £1.3m loss on £45.3m turnover in its first year under an employee ownership trust. Administrators cite reduced capital spending in construction, groundworks and waste recycling, and are now seeking buyers for the company’s assets.

Prolonged storms in Vietnam have triggered one of the most severe sequences of rainfall-induced hazards in decades, with extensive flooding and more than a dozen landslides reported across Lam Dong province and neighbouring highland areas. Intense, long-duration rainfall on steep, highly weathered slopes has caused rapid slope failures, debris flows and road embankment collapses, cutting key mountain highways and isolating several rural communities. Geotechnical teams now face urgent stabilisation of saturated cut slopes, clearance of landslide debris from narrow carriageways, and reassessment of drainage and slope design criteria for future extreme events.

Fire enforcement notice has been served on Bylor JV (Laing O’Rourke and Bouygues Travaux Publics) at Hinkley Point C after ONR inspectors found significant fire safety shortfalls in multiple advanced-stage site buildings, including inadequate general fire precautions and absence of a compliant emergency lighting system. The notice, issued under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, requires improvements to be completed by 30 June 2026, with interim risk controls expected. Bylor is already facing two ONR prosecutions over a November 2022 fatality and an August 2022 rebar mesh wall collapse causing serious injury.

A 19th‑century heritage footbridge in Gloucestershire collapsed when an excavator, incorrectly loaded onto a works train, struck the structure on the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway. RAIB found the plant had been positioned too high on a flat wagon by a volunteer with limited competence and no formal loading plan, breaching the line’s own loading rules. The report presses heritage and volunteer‑run railways to adopt formal competence management, documented loading procedures and clearer structural clearance checks for overbridges and footbridges.

Manchester’s Grade I-listed town hall refurbishment will now cost £524.8m, up 72% from the original £305.2m budget, with completion pushed back from 2024 to spring 2027 under main contractor Bovis Construction (Lendlease). Manchester City Council cites 4–6% annual labour cost growth since October 2024, covid-era disruption, subcontractor insolvencies and strict heritage requirements demanding closely matched replacement stone from alternative quarries after the approved source halted bulk supply. Ongoing discoveries of Victorian structural quirks are forcing on-the-hoof redesigns, creating cascading programme delays and further cost escalation.

Record monsoon floods and landslides have killed more than 600 people across Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, with Sri Lanka’s central highlands and Indonesia’s West Sumatra and South Sulawesi provinces suffering major slope failures. Prolonged rainfall well above seasonal averages has triggered debris flows, embankment breaches and riverbank collapses, overwhelming drainage canals and older flood defences in low-lying urban areas. Geotechnical teams are prioritising emergency slope stabilisation, rapid debris clearance on key highways and reassessment of design rainfall and factor-of-safety assumptions for cut slopes and retaining structures.

A stormwater upgrade on Cliff Drive in Leura, NSW’s Blue Mountains, replaced a failed culvert after landslip damage from repeated extreme rainfall, with civil contractor Brefni working on steep terrain and in environmentally sensitive bushland. Coates supplied an integrated shoring and dewatering solution plus plant hire, enabling safe excavation and culvert installation in unstable ground conditions while maintaining road access. The project was completed ahead of schedule and has since received an industry award, signalling the value of coordinated temporary works design in landslip-prone corridors.

A catastrophic landslide in Afaahiti on Tahiti’s southeastern coast has killed at least eight people and left several missing after heavily saturated hillside slopes collapsed during intense rainfall. The failure involved a steep, previously vegetated slope above residential areas, with debris flows destroying multiple homes and blocking local roads that connect to the coastal ring route. Authorities are now assessing residual slope stability, potential for secondary failures, and the need for rapid drainage works, slope reinforcement and revised setback distances for hillside development.

A Northampton roofing contractor has been fined £16,650 after a 31-year-old employee fell more than three metres through an uncovered skylight opening while re-covering a single-storey flat roof on Sywell Road, suffering injuries requiring surgery and long-term treatment. Health & Safety Executive investigators found Kingsley Roofing Contractors Limited had not properly planned work at height or installed effective fall-prevention measures around two large skylight openings. The firm pleaded guilty to breaching Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and was ordered to pay £7,205 in costs plus a £2,000 victim surcharge.

Torrential monsoon rainfall over the past week in North Sumatra has triggered debris-laden flash floods and multiple landslides, killing at least 10 people and leaving six missing in districts including Toba and Samosir. Police and BNPB teams report riverbank failures and slope collapses along road corridors and near settlements, with access to several upland villages cut by washed-out embankments and blocked mountain passes. For geotechnical and civil engineers, the events point to highly saturated residual soils, inadequate slope drainage, and vulnerable transport links in steep catchments during peak monsoon conditions.

Warrenpoint Harbour Authority has been fined £80,000 at Newry Crown Court after 58-year-old employee Kevin McGeough was fatally struck and run over by a 20-tonne Volvo loading shovel at Berth 1 in July 2019. McGeough had been power washing in the dockyard close to the travel route of two large loading shovels transferring wood chip 150 metres across the berth, with one machine carrying about 2 tonnes in a 1.69-metre-high bucket at the time. Investigators found no clearly identified, segregated or physically protected pedestrian routes, exposing workers to uncontrolled vehicle movements.

Heavy rainfall in Sri Lanka’s Central Province triggered a fatal landslide that killed four people when a saturated slope above a narrow local road collapsed onto passing vehicles, according to the Disaster Management Centre. The failure followed several days of intense monsoonal rain that exceeded typical seasonal totals, with local authorities already recording multiple smaller slope instabilities and debris flows in adjacent hill districts. Geotechnical teams are now prioritising rapid slope inspections, temporary drainage and toe protection on weathered residual soils along rural road corridors that lack engineered retaining structures.

The UK High Court has found BHP Group liable for the 2015 failure of the Fundão tailings dam in Mariana, Brazil, which killed 19 people and polluted around 600km of the Rio Doce and coastal waterways. The ruling concerns the collapse of an upstream tailings structure jointly owned via Samarco, which released tens of millions of cubic metres of iron ore waste and devastated multiple downstream communities. The judgment opens the door to large-scale civil claims in England, sharpening scrutiny of tailings design, monitoring and governance for UK-listed miners operating overseas.

Northern Graphite has halted mining and milling at its Lac des Iles operation in Quebec after a mill bearing failure, using the four- to six-week replacement window to pull forward January maintenance tied to a new pit development. The 35-year-old mine, North America’s only graphite producer, currently outputs about 15,000 tonnes of concentrate annually with installed capacity of 25,000 tonnes, and is advancing a Phase 1 pit expansion supported by C$6.22 million in federal funding. Mining has already reached the permitted 209 m elevation, and inadvertent blasting slightly below this level has paused pit operations pending impact checks and a minor permit amendment, risking a two- to three-month production gap before the new pit starts, targeted for Q2 2026.

Rising water levels in Kenya’s Lake Naivasha have submerged large parts of Kihoto estate, displacing about 7,000 people and forcing the use of tourist boats for evacuation as access roads and ground floors are inundated. Local officials report that the lake has been rising for more than a decade, with recent levels overtopping informal embankments and flooding masonry houses, pit latrines and septic systems. Geotechnical concerns now centre on saturated foundations, slope instability on reclaimed lakebed plots, and contamination risks from submerged sanitation infrastructure.

A major landslide on the 33‑kilometre Khanh Le Pass in central Viet Nam buried a passenger bus late on Sunday, killing six people and injuring 19. The mountain road, cut into steep terrain with deeply weathered residual soils, is already known for frequent rockfalls and debris slides during intense rainfall. The incident highlights urgent needs for detailed slope stability assessment, improved drainage, and engineered protection measures such as retaining structures, rockfall barriers, and real‑time monitoring on this and similar high‑risk corridors.

Heavy rainfall across Indonesia’s Central Java has triggered multiple landslides, with the most severe in Cibeunying village burying at least 35 houses and cutting a key district road. Steep residual soil slopes, shallow colluvial deposits and deforested hillsides failed after several days of intense rain, with local officials reporting tension cracks and minor slips on adjacent slopes now at risk of progressive failure. Emergency works focus on debris clearance, temporary gabion retaining structures and drainage channels, but long-term stabilisation will require detailed geotechnical mapping and slope zoning.

Un effondrement de pont dans une mine de cuivre-cobalt en République démocratique du Congo a fait au moins 32 morts, la structure s’étant rompue alors que des travailleurs et des véhicules étaient en train de la franchir. L’incident s’est produit dans un couloir minier en activité, où le pont assurait un accès essentiel au-dessus d’un chenal de roulage ou de drainage, et les équipes de secours sont encore en train de récupérer les corps et d’évaluer la stabilité des terrassements adjacents. Cette défaillance soulève des questions immédiates concernant la capacité portante du pont, la gestion de la corrosion et de la fatigue, ainsi que les conditions de soutènement géotechnique dans les infrastructures minières fortement sollicitées par le trafic.