In addition to the loss of life, nearby towns have been completely destroyed by the ensuing floods and mudslides.
Advertisement
The civil defense arm for Mariana could not confirm casualty numbers but said numbers reported in Brazilian media were speculative. The dam is operated by Samarco, a company owned 50-50 by BHP and Brazilian mining giant Vale.
“We designed and we supplied an inflatable rubber dam which was one meter high and 30 metres wide, and that was installed on the spillway of the Santarem dam”, Mason said.
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.
The rescue teams continued the search even after nightfall.
“The number of missing is going to surpass 40 but that is not official”, said Adao Severino Junior, fire chief in the city of Mariana in southeastern Minas Gerais state.
Firefighters confirmed 30 injuries and at least two deaths, but said the count was likely to rise as pouring rain slowed the search and mudslides knocked out roads and cell towers.
The company is attempting to assuage fears that the mixture of water and residue from mining operations that the dam released when it burst contains any toxin that could result in the contamination of the land and rivers. Television images from Brazil showed footage of heavy trucks being overturned and homes awash in red mud around the area close to the dam.
The dams had been holding water and iron ore tailings when they failed Thursday afternoon near the towns of Mariana and Bento Rodrigues in the central region of Minas Gerais, about 280 miles north of Rio de Janeiro.
The said they are making “every effort to prioritize care to people and mitigate damage to the environment”, according to the Telegraph UK.
A lawyer specialising in environmental and mining cases said it was too early to estimate the financial setback for the mining companies, since the cause of the disaster was still unknown. But the mining company Samarco, which operates the site, had yet to confirm whether there were any victims.
Mining firms are struggling following a collapse in prices of iron ore and other commodities as demand drops in China, the world’s top consumer of industrial raw materials.
Advertisement
“When day does break (in Brazil) our biggest imperative is to secure the safety of the community and obviously our workforce and then to start planning how we can restore the community to health in the wake of this bad accident”, he said.
