Brazil Dam Break Buries Minas Gerais Town, Results in Several Deaths, Injuries

It said numerous 200 houses in the village were covered with mud.

He said 122 Bento Rodrigues homes were buried in mud, while 150 local residents spent the night at a shelter in Mariana, a few 23km away.

“I heard screaming and saw the water coming fast, about 15 (49 feet) or 20 meters (66 feet) high”, said survivor Antonio Santos, a construction worker who was at home in the village of Bento Rodrigues when the dams broke on Thursday afternoon.

According to authorities, the floods have reached a nearby village and the people living there are also being moved to avoid any further damage to life. Police, firefighters and local officials said they could not confirm any deaths.

In a statement on its website, Samarco said it was making “every effort to prioritise care to people and mitigate damage to the environment”.

The figures were released Friday at a press conference offered by Minas Gerais state fire rescue and mine operator Samarco, which is jointly owned by Brazil’s Vale and Australia-based BHP Billiton.

BHP Billiton is concerned for the safety of employees and the local community, the Anglo-Australian mining major said in a stock market statement.

Severino Junior said late Thursday that more than 50 injured in the disaster in the village of Bento Rodrigues, in southeastern Minas Gerais state. The company said one of the dead was a mine worker. Mason said he doesn’t know which of the two failed dams, Santarem or Fundao, burst first and has no information yet about the cause.

The company explained its dams are composed of four structures: Germano, Fundão, Santarem and Cava de Germano.

So-called tailings ponds, masses of finely ground waste rock mixed with water left over from extracting more valuable minerals, can contain harmful chemicals, adding to fears of potential contamination from the Samarco dam bursts.

“Last year, the joint venture company produced 29 million tonnes of iron ore pellets and delivered earnings before interest, tax and depreciation of $695 million”. The reasons for the collapse have yet to be determined, but the company did say the dams had been inspected recently and cleared by environmental authorities.

The company does not have information on the environmental impact of the dam bursts, a Samarco spokesman told the Reuters news agency. The dam is situated near the Gualaxo do Norte river, which provides water to Belo Horizonte, a city of 2.5 million people in Minas Gerais state.

Samarco claimed that there were no chemical elements involved in the spill that could pose a health risk.

The iron ore Samarco produces at the Germano mine is transported through a pipe from the Germano complex to the state of Espirito Santo.