At Least 25 Missing, Feared Dead in Brazil Mine Dam Burst: Mayor

The dam committee in Brazil called the burst the worst ever registered in the country.

The mining company Samarco, which operates the site, is jointly owned by two mining giants, Vale of Brazil and BHP Billiton of Australia.

BHP has issued a statement regarding the incident, in which it said that it “is concerned for the safety of employees and the local community”.

“All my life I had heard people saying that it was going to break but I never thought much of it until the water flooded my house”, he was quoted as saying.

Forty-five remained missing, the G1 news service of the Globo Media group reported, citing the local union.

On Friday, Samarco was working with police, firefighters and other rescue workers to help the injured and homeless, while in Minas Gerais state authorities attempted to clear roads and replace bridges swept away by torrents of muddy water.

The head of Samarco’s emergency planning operations, Germano Silva Lopes, told a news conference the company had detected a tremor but no anomalies in the dams before they burst.

A girl rests on a mattresses in a sports arena after residents were displaced by dams that burst in Mariana, Minas Gerais state, Brazil, Friday, November 6, 2015. The company said it was “not possible, at this time, to confirm the causes and extent of what has occurred”.

The dam released heavy water and mud into the town of Bento Rodrigues.

Last year, the joint venture company produced 29 million tonnes of iron ore pellets and delivered earnings before interest, tax and depreciation of $695m.

“Most of what happened there has been under the cloak of darkness”, he told reporters.

“It’s still far too premature to come out with any concrete conclusions, and we still wait for further investigations and a position from Vale to better understand implications”, BTG Pactual SA analyst Leonardo Correa said in a note.

The said they are making “every effort to prioritize care to people and mitigate damage to the environment”, according to the Telegraph UK.

For reasons yet unknown, the dam broke about 4:20 p.m. (1820 GMT) between the old colonial towns of Ouro Preto and Mariana, in a major mining region.

Meanwhile, a few have raised concerns that the the toxic sludge could contaminate the Gualaxo do Norte river that provides water to Belo Horizonte, a city of 2.5 million people. 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.