By Saw Nang
MANDALAY, Myanmar — With barely enough time to yell “run,” hundreds of jade miners had only moments to escape their killer: a giant wave of mud and water, more than 20 feet high, propelled out of a giant pit mine swollen with rainwater.
Weeks of heavy rains, carried by the seasonal monsoon, had filled the Wai Khar jade mine in northern Myanmar and turned it into a lake. Towering over the pit was a 1,000-foot hillside topped with a mound of mining waste, its foundations weakening with every drop of rain.