Brazil rescuers search for 19 missing after dams burst

Top Story – Two dams holding iron-mine wastewater broke in the southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais on Thursday, flooding the nearby town of Bento Rodrigues with water, mud and potentially toxic mining tailings.

Police, firefighters and local officials said they could not confirm any reported death tolls or victims.

Bento Rodrigues, a village of approximately 600 to 2,000, was completely destroyed in as 65ft floodwaters erupted from the broken dams on Thursday.

“What we’re seeing is maybe three to six people, at the most 10 people, that are missing from Bento”, he said ahead of a formal briefing scheduled on Saturday.

“We’re mapping the area and working with local residents to work out where people might be located”.

Authorities confirmed at least one death – and said an unknown number of other people were missing.

The sucking mud has hampered search and rescue efforts.

Most of the village’s inhabitants work for Samarco, the company jointly owned by BHP Billiton of Australia and Vale of Brazil, which operates the site where the disaster struck. Images showed the town flooded with mud and water.

While it is still unclear what caused the collapses, Samarco said Saturday that workers were doing normal scheduled work on one of the dams to increase its size when it burst and swept them away in the flood.

“We saw him coming with the two children, but he wasn’t able to hold on to them”, Marlon Celio, 19, a neighbor, told the newspaper.

Speaking at a news conference Friday, Pimentel called it “a awful scene, an environmental tragedy” and said the accident was the “biggest natural disaster in the history of our state”.

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.

Civil defense officials said state sanitation authorities would test the toxicity of the rivers.

Vale directed questions to officials at their Samarco joint venture, which said in a statement it had not yet determined why the dam burst or the extent of the disaster.

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

The Samarco operation in Brazil has an annual production capacity of more than 21M tonnes of iron ore pellets and 1M tonnes of concentrates.

According to Samarco, “all have operation licenses issued by the regional environmental office” and the last inspection took place in July 2015, indicating indicated the dams “were in total safety conditions”.

Analysts at Clarksons Platou Securities said on Friday that the likelihood of a lengthy stoppage at the Germano mine, which accounts for about one-fifth of seaborne pellet market, could lift iron ore prices.