Dam failure released tidal wave of toxic mud
BRUMADINHO, Brazil — Luiz de Castro was installing lamps at a mining complex in Brazil late last month when a loud blast split the air. He figured it was just a truck tire popping, but a friend knew better.
“No, it’s not that!” the friend said. “Run!”
Dashing up a staircase, caked in mud and pelted by flying rocks, Castro clambered to safety. But as he watched, a wall of mud unleashed by the collapse of a mining dam swallowed his co-workers, he said. Tiago, George, Icaro — they and at least 154 others, all buried alive.
The deluge of toxic mud stretched for 5 miles, crushing homes, offices and people — a tragedy, but hardly a surprise, experts say.
There are 88 mining dams in Brazil built like the one that failed — enormous reservoirs of mining waste held back by little more than walls of sand and silt. And all but four of the dams have been rated by the government as equally vulnerable, or worse.
Even more alarming, at least 28 sit directly uphill from cities or towns, with more than 100,000 people living in especially risky areas if the dams failed, an estimate by The New York Times found.
In the disaster last month, all the elements for catastrophe were there: A bare-bones reservoir of mining waste built on the cheap, sitting above a large town nestled underneath. Overlooked warnings of structural problems that could lead to a collapse. Monitoring equipment that had stopped working.
And perhaps above all, a country where a powerful mining industry has been free to act more or less unchecked.
The threat of poorly constructed mining dams in Brazil goes far beyond one company. The latest deadly failure — the second in Brazil in three years — has made it clear that neither the mining industry nor regulators have the situation under control.
Vale S.A., the world’s largest iron ore producer, says it will close all 10 of its dams in Brazil with a design similar to the one it ran in the town, Brumadinho.