LIVES OF REFUGEES

How residents of the world’s biggest refugee camp love, lose and grow up,

When the dams holding waste from a Brazilian iron ore mine collapsed in November, it triggered a huge mud wave that blanketed villages and polluted a major river flowing into the Atlantic.

The torrent carried billions of litres of mud and waste, killing at least 17 people, leaving hundreds of families homeless, wiping out wildlife and unleashing devastation that, all together, the government considers to be Brazil’s worst environmental disaster ever.

The mine and dams were operated by Samarco, a joint venture of international mining giants Vale and BHP Billiton. The Brazilian authorities are seeking about $5 billion from the companies for recovery efforts, but there could be further punishment. Last week, federal police accused the mine owners of environmental crimes related to the disaster.

Marcio Pimenta, a Brazilian documentary and travel photographer, recently retraced the more than 500-kilometre route of destruction.

“The noise was deafening — iron twisting, glass being broken, trees being uprooted from the ground, the cry of the people,” a local resident told Pimenta of the moment the mud torrent came. Whole houses were covered in toxic mud in rural villages like Paracatu, in Minas Gerais state.

MARCIO PIMENTA PHOTOS FOR GLOBALPOST Nuns observe the Doce River, one of the largest in Brazil, polluted with mining waste, in Regencia.

Vast swathes of forest were devastated by the toxic sludge tsunami, threatening local wildlife and water sources.

The mud-caked walls of a church in the village of Paracatu.