Remote villages swept away in a deluge of mud as dams burst in largest spill of its kind ever

Remote villages swept away in a deluge of mud as dams burst in largest spill of its kind ever

THREE days after two giant mining dams burst in central Brazil in the largest spill of its kind ever, haphazard rescue efforts struggled to reach remote villages swamped in the deluge of mud, as the death toll rose and criticism of the mining companies mounted.

Officials raised the death toll to three people, two of whom were found in the path of the mud flow, and a third who died while receiving medical treatment. That number is expected to rise, as at least 28 people are now confirmed missing. The mine’s operator, Samarco, is jointly owned by Vale of Brazil and Australia’s BHP Billiton, two of the world’s largest mining companies.

Officials of Minas Gerais state, where the dams are located, acknowledged that the chance of finding more survivors was fading after the largest spill of its kind ever recorded.

“Hope decreases as time passes,” Fernando Pimentel, the state’s governor, told reporters on Sunday.

In a statement released to the Australian Securities Exchange, BHP said there had been one confirmed fatality from the Samarco workforce.

“Details are still emerging in relation to the Samarco employees and contractors impacted by the incident. At this stage, Samarco has advised that there is at least one confirmed fatality with a further 13 members of the workforce missing,” the company said.

“The number of people in the communities impacted by the incident is yet to be confirmed, but the local authorities have reported that, at this stage there are at least 15 people from the communities unaccounted for.”

BHP, which said there was no confirmation of the cause of the tailings release, said it would provide further updates as soon as more information became available.

Following this incident, BHP’s iron ore production guidance for the 2016 financial year is under review, the company said.

At 10.22am (AEDT), BHP shares were down 3.48 per cent to $21.91 against a benchmark fall of 0.67 per cent. The miner’s London-listed shares fell 5.7 per cent on Friday.

The Samarco operations have the capacity to produce 30.5 million tonnes per annum of iron ore pellets and to process 32 Mtpa of concentrate, BHP said. In the 2015 financial year, BHP Billiton’s share of production was 14.5 Mt and the contribution from Samarco was approximately 3 per cent of the group’s underlying EBIT, the company said.

Many villages were swept away hours after the dams broke. Many locals said their first awareness that something was amiss came when they saw a giant dust cloud rising in the distance. A number of these villagers said they had long feared a dam collapse.

The environmental division of the state prosecutor has raised questions about the dam’s stability in the past; in 2013, it commissioned a study of the dam that concluded that efforts to raise its capacity, plus the location of some of the waste materials, could undermine its stability.

Mining executives have faced questions about why there was no alarm system set up in the villages that sat below the dams. Company officials said that they used telephones to warn villagers of the accident but could not say how many people were notified or how quickly.

João Bosco da Silva, 72, a resident of Barra Longa, a small town in the path of destruction, criticised Samarco, the Brazilian operator of the mining complex that includes the dams. Although residents saw television images of the destruction of the dam break, which occurred around 4pm Thursday, most had no idea that the mud flow could reach them more than a day later.

“Samarco used to say that that dam offered no risk. There are people here who lost everything,” Mr Bosco da Silva said.

The two dams that broke were so-called tailings dams, which are used to store mineral waste and water from the mine’s iron-ore operations.

The spill is the largest ever recorded for a tailings dam, according to Robert Chambers, a Montana geophysicist and president of the non-profit Center for Science in Public Participation, whose group has tracked these types of failures back to 1915.

The powerful flow of thick sludge advanced dozens of miles, swallowing up a string of rural farming villages wedged in rugged mountain valleys off the cell phone grid. A number of residents said they received no official warning that the deluge was headed their way, even though it took several hours to arrive from the site of the breach.

The mud came at midnight, and we grabbed what we could and ran as best we could,” said Dirceu da Luz, a 72-year-old farmer from the mountain village of Mandioca, some 60km from the dam break. He said he hiked to a country road to wait for aid to arrive. Most of the houses in his town were destroyed, along with the village’s animals and crops, he said.

Samarco officials have said that the state Civil Defence authorities are in charge of the rescue operations, but that it is supporting those efforts. The company said in a statement it has rented seven helicopters for use by rescuers, delivered food and water and found housing for 588 residents left homeless.

Lieutenant Colonel Ronilson Caldeira, secretary-general of Minas Gerais’ Civil Defence department, said the state has been delivering food and supplies by helicopter to a number of affected towns.

The slide has left the remnants of villages, flat plains of gelatinous mud filling structures such as corrals, and the occasional white steeples of a small church rising above the destruction. In a village called Gesteira, an elderly woman called out for help from a wrecked hovel, unreachable in the middle of a viscous swamp of mud and mining waste.

“The mud came through and destroyed everything, there’s nothing left,” said Valdimir Campos, who was sitting on a hill overlooking the destroyed village of Gesteira.

On Sunday, BHP said its chief executive Andrew Mackenzie would fly to Brazil this week to assist in the damage response, and “to understand first-hand the human, environmental and operational impacts of the incident.”

“Words cannot describe the impact of this tragedy on the employees and contractors of Samarco, their families and the community,” BHP Chairman Jac Nasser said in a statement.

Vale said in an email that its president, Murilo Ferreira, flew over the affected area on Saturday and later met with Samarco officials to discuss the situation. The company said it provided helicopters and other equipment to Samarco to aid in the relief effort.

Samarco officials have not provided information on what caused the dams to collapse. All work at the mine has been halted.

The two dams released some 62 million cubic metres of mud and mining waste into the valleys below. That quantity would fill New York’s Giants Stadium 34 times with some left over. The dams are part of a three-dam complex to contain permanent lakes of mining waste. The third and largest dam in the complex did not collapse.

The largest dam to collapse, called Fundão, was undergoing new construction to increase its capacity when it failed. Mud from Fundão flowed downhill and broke through a lower dam called Santarem.

Company officials said that the construction was not a cause of the dam break. Company and state officials said that the dam’s licences and permits were up to date. At the same time, state environmental prosecutors have begun an investigation into whether all the terms of the licences had been met.

Fernando José Carneiro Magalhães, the mayor of Barra Longa, said four bridges in the town of 6200 residents have been covered with mud, and two schools have been rendered useless by the damage. The first floor of his own home was inundated with sludge.