Almost 30 missing in mudflow in Brazil mine disaster

While officials confirmed only one death since the accident on Thursday, local TV channels reported two bodies were found on a riverbank several kilometers away from the mine. “The number of missing will rise because we’re talking to the residents of Bento [Rodrigues] and a few people still aren’t accounted for”, Duarte Junior, mayor of the nearby city of Mariana, told reporters.

More than 500 people have been rescued by emergency services and taken to Mariana, where the company says 557 people are being accommodated in hotels at its expense.

Rescuers will spend a fourth day Sunday scouring for survivors beneath an avalanche of mud and mining sludge that buried a village in southeast Brazil, killing at least two people and leaving 28 missing.

So the concern really is that the death toll could continue to rise.

It’s not clear what caused them to burst.

Speaking at a news conference, Minas Gerais Gov. Fernando Pimentel said it was still not known what triggered Thursday’s failure of dams at the Samarco mine, which sent viscous red mud, water and debris flooding into the hamlet of Bento Rodrigues, flattening all but a handful of buildings.

People remove mud from a damaged home in Barra Longa after a dam…

“I don’t want to take away anyone’s hope – it might be that we find someone alive, but as time passes, hope is fading”, he said.

Bernardo Trinidade, a 58-year-old plumber, said authorities warned that the river behind his house in Barra Longa, about 50 miles from the mine, would swell by 3 to 6 feet.

As rescue teams labored to reach isolated communities, state officials were taking precautions to contain the environmental fallout from the burst dams.

The dams held back so-called tailings ponds, masses of finely ground waste rock and water left over from extracting more valuable minerals, which can contain harmful chemicals. Instead, it said it called the civil defense authorities, a few families and community leaders to warn them. Meanwhile, residents who came in contact with the thick mud were advised to shower and dispose of their clothing.

Samarco has played down fears that toxic residues in the mud could pose risks to health or the environment.

The company has suggested an quake in the vicinity of the mine may have caused the dams to burst but that it was too early to establish the exact cause.

Samarco Mineracao SA, the world’s second-largest producer of iron-ore pellets, will halt output of the raw material for blast furnaces following what Brazilian prosecutors described as the worst-ever environmental disaster in the state of Minas Gerais. BHP Billiton and Vale already face iron ore prices at their lowest in a decade.