The incident took place early on Thursday in the jade-rich Hpakant area of Kachin state after a bout of heavy rainfall, the Myanmar Fire Services Department said on Facebook.

Maung Khaing, a 38-year-old miner from the area, said he saw a towering pile of waste that looked on the verge of collapse and was about to take a picture when people began shouting "run, run!"
Within a minute, all the people at the bottom [of the hill] just disappeared," he told Reuters news agency by phone.
I feel empty in my heart. I still have goosebumps ... There were people stuck in the mud shouting for help, but no one could help them

Other bodies are in the mud. The numbers are going to rise," he told Reuters.
Than Hlaing, a member of a local civil society group helping in the aftermath of the disaster, said those killed were informal workers scavenging the waste left by a larger mining company.
There's no hope for the families to get compensation as they were freelance miners," she said i don't see any route to escape this kind of cycle. People take risks go into landfills, as they have no choice

Official sales of jade in Myanmar were worth $750.4m in 2016-2017, according to data published by the government as part of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative But experts believe the true value of the industry, which mainly exports to China, is much larger Northern Myanmar's abundant natural resources - including jade, timber, gold and amber - have also helped finance both sides of a decades-long conflict between ethnic Kachin and the military