I’m trying to recall some of my earliest memories of world events. The further back I go, the more vague things get as you’d expect.

I think I recall seeing on tv over the course of several days in the 90s a tragic and mostly unsuccessful rescue operation to try and dig out kids who were buried in rubble and mud from a giant landslide that occurred after an earthquake.

I think it was in a part of the world you might have called 3rd world at the time and this featured in the media coverage in respect to the inadequacy of the rescue operation and the infrastructure allowing access to the site of the disaster.

What sticks in my mind is footage, almost always from the same angle, a very wide shot from far away of the school on a very steep hillside just about completely buried in mud. I think the buildings nearby that still stood looked kind of tropical, I think I recall tin roofs but the memory is a bit too vague to say that for sure. I think the angle all the news coverage seemed to be using over the several days must have been one of the only cameras near the scene and in a fixed spot since it was hard to see much of what was going on and it was the same angle throughout the reporting.

While researching this I came across photos of the Aberfan disaster in Wales and thought that might have been it until I saw it was from the 60s, and also the hillside wasn’t really tall enough and the obviously the location, UK doesn’t match my memory. I also found stuff about the same thing happening in Yunan Province in China. But that was in 2012. The photo in that article is basically exactly my memory in terms of hillside and type of region I’m thinking except that I recall it being a bit more cropped in and much more blurry SD-analogue TV-ish looking as it was actually footage not a photo.