Scores missing in dam failure

SAO PAULO — A dam that held back mining waste collapsed Friday in Brazil, inundating a nearby community in reddish-brown sludge, killing at least seven people and leaving scores of others missing.

Parts of the city of Brumadinho were evacuated, and firefighters rescued people by helicopter and ground vehicles. Local television channel TV Record showed a helicopter hovering inches off the ground as it pulled people covered in mud out of the waste.

Photos showed rooftops poking above an extensive field of mud, which also cut off roads. The flow of waste reached the nearby community of Vila Ferteco and an administrative office for the Brazilian mining company Vale SA, where employees were present.

Seven bodies had been recovered by late Friday, according to the governor’s office of Minas Gerais state.

Vale CEO Fabio Schartzman said he did not know what caused the collapse. About 300 employees were working when it happened. About 100 had been accounted for, and rescue efforts were underway to determine what had happened to the others.

“The principal victims were our own workers,” Schartzman said Friday evening. He said a restaurant also was buried by the mud at lunchtime.

Another dam administered by Vale and the Australian mining company BHP Billiton collapsed in 2015 in the city of Mariana in Minas Gerais state, resulting in 19 deaths and forcing hundreds from their homes.

Considered the worst environmental disaster in Brazilian history, it left 250,000 people without drinking water and killed thousands of fish. An estimated 60 million cubic meters of waste flooded rivers and eventually flowed into the Atlantic Ocean.

Schartzman said what happened Friday was “a human tragedy much larger than the tragedy of Mariana, but probably the environmental damage will be less.”