A Georgian village falls through the cracks, 31 March 2022

‘Giant cracks appeared near the village and started moving towards the houses’, says Teona, a resident of Itkhvisi. ‘Within two weeks, the walls of my house started collapsing. Yesterday part of the house completely collapsed’.

Itkhvisi is a sleepy village in central Georgia overlooking the River Kvirila in the valley below. The approach to the village has become precarious, the soil collapsing underfoot. Massive cracks scar the road as nearby the soil continues to shift daily, threatening to make the entire village uninhabitable. 

At least 14 houses have now partially or fully collapsed in Itkhvisi, and people at almost every house are collecting their belongings and evacuating...

While local residents are certain that the collapse of their village is the result of the nearby manganese mines, Georgian Manganese, the company which operates the mines, says otherwise.

Company spokesperson Tamar Khurtsia told OC Media that since the company took over the mines in Chiatura in 2007, they have never extracted ore under Itkhvisi’s populated area. She said that the Itkhvisi Mine was operating as usual, but that this was ‘quite far’ from the village...