Devastating irony in the wake of a deadly mudslide
JORGE Oliveira, a truck driver from the Brazilian mining town of Mariana, recalls how, last Wednesday, he delivered a drilling team from a company called Geocontrole to a large wastewater dam run by local iron ore miner Samarco. That was the last he saw of them.
The three men, who told him they were there to conduct tests, were swallowed up the following day by the torrent of mud set loose by the sudden failure of two dams at the site.
They are among the official casualties of what is being seen as one of Brazil’s worst mining disasters, with six people dead and 21 missing. But Oliveira makes an observation common among residents: any effort by the authorities to make an example of Samarco by shutting it down for good would ironically end up punishing the very people it is supposed to protect, because the economies of the local communities here revolve around the mining industry. Munici-palities in the state of Minas Gerais depend on the industry for up to 85% of their budgets, according to the state’s association of mining municipalities, and this income has already been falling sharply in line with a global slump in iron ore prices. “Here, everything depends on the mining companies. If they die, the city dies as well,” Mr Oliveira says.
Indeed, mining is in the blood in this part of Brazil. Minas Gerais, or General Mines, is named after the industry. The biggest town in the region near Samarco’s Mariana mine is Ouro Preto, a 17thcentury gold mining town whose lavish baroque architecture is testimony to when it was known as the Vila Rica, or Rich Village — its wealth destined for the Portuguese crown in Lisbon. Today, the roads are stained red with iron ore dust. It is in this region that the world’s biggest iron ore exporter, Vale, was born. Its presence remains overwhelming.
Even so, few doubt that the future of Samarco, a venture between Vale and another of the world’s biggest iron ore miners, AngloAustralian company BHP Billiton, is in jeopardy from the disaster. The company has had to suspend operations and has had its investment grade credit rating downgraded to junk by Moody’s. “Depending on the extent of the damage to operations ... a multiple-notch downgrade may occur,” the ratings agency warned.
The horror of the Samarco dam failure has shocked Brazilians. In the former hamlet of Bento Rodrigues, once a simple oasis surrounded by tiny farms closest to the dam, only one street on higher ground appears to have survived. The rest of the town has either been washed away or remains coated in sticky mud. The walls of the surrounding river valley have been stripped of all vegetation by the mud tsunami.
Manoel Gonçalves says he was fishing with his son near Bento Rodrigues when the mud caught them by surprise. He demonstrates how he wrapped himself around a tree until it passed. “It went over my head, I was in terror,” says the