The figures were released Friday at a press conference offered by Minas Gerais state fire rescue and mine operator Samarco, which is jointly owned by Brazil's Vale and Australia-based BHP Billiton. The disaster occurred at 4:20 p.m. Thursday and laid waste to the settlements outside Mariana with a mudslide that destroyed or covered everything in its path. Cars could be seen piled on top of what remained of houses, and mountains of mud stood where previously there had been plazas and highways. Both the confirmed fatality and the 13 missing persons were Samarco employees.
Firefighters said Friday they found a dead body in a river about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the place of the accident, but have not yet been able to confirm whether it was a second mudslide victim. Most of the nearby residents managed to escape in time since they could see and hear the retaining walls bursting - and despite the fact that neither the company nor the municipality had an alarm system to warn people in cases like this. Most of the residents managed to flee to higher ground on trucks belonging to a local construction company," Sidney Solveira of Bento Rodrigues, one of the hardest hit districts, told EFE. Close to 100 firefighters with the aid of helicopters have been working since Thursday on rescue operations and managed to find some 500 people isolated by the mudslide and take them to shelters.
Samarco president Ricardo Vescovi said the law does not oblige the company to install alarm systems in populations near their operations, but the mining company did phone a large number of local inhabitants to warn them of the impending disaster. Samarco said the mines at the moment of the accident held close to 7 million cubic meters (247 million cubic feet) of mineral residues and 55 million cubic meters (1.9 billion cubic feet) of water. "This is the worst crisis in our history. We still haven't evaluated the extent of the damage," Vescovi said, adding that the company's priority is rescuing the victims and aiding those left homeless.
According to the executive, 70 families have been put up in hotels paid for by the mining company. Samarco denied that the mudslide residues were toxic and described them as residues "mostly" composed of silicon, a mineral used in processing iron, and which "contain no chemical element injurious to health." The company said that a government inspection in July found no safety defects in its retaining walls.
Mudslide leaves 530 homeless in Brazil
