I understand what you are saying, but what I was referring to, was the initial projections of the travel distance vs, the actual travel distance being considerable farther due to a much larger area having slid. With the initial projections, a considerably smaller area, and thus smaller height and smaller volume was projected to slide. Only in the last few days, did a larger area begin to slip. At this point it was too late, as there was no safe way to move the equipment further out of harms way. A decision was made to simply abandon what could not be safely moved and hope it weathered the storm, so to speak.
Had the initially projected slide occurred, the equipment would have been out of harms way. Had the slippage not shown itself to be considerably larger in the later days before the actual slide occurred, there would likely have been operators still working on the equipment that was still in the pit, and this would have had an entirely different outcome.....and not a good one at that.