Reconnaissance of the July 10, 2000, Payatas Landfill Failure

Following ten days of extremely heavy rains from two typhoons, a fast moving slope failure of municipal solid waste was triggered at the Payatas Landfill, Quezon City, Philippines. The wasteslide buried more than 330 persons. Only 58 persons were rescued while, after weeks of recovery efforts, 278 bodies were recovered. This paper documents the events and circumstances that led to the failure. Beyond stating the known facts leading up to the failure, only a brief discussion of the suspected reasons for the failure is presented in this paper.