Horses struggle in the mud in the small town of Bento Rodrigues after an iron mine tailings dam burst in Minas Gerais state, in southeastern Brazil. Union officials
representing workers at the mine said they feared that as many as 15
people might have died.: photo by Felipe Dana/AP, 5 November 2015
If waker care, if sodayne pale Coulour
If many sighes with litle speche to playne
Now ioy, now woo, if they my chere disdayne
For hope of smalle if muche to fere therfore
To hast to slak my pase lesse or more
Be signe of love then do I love agayne.
If many sighes with litle speche to playne
Now ioy, now woo, if they my chere disdayne
For hope of smalle if muche to fere therfore
To hast to slak my pase lesse or more
Be signe of love then do I love agayne.
Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542): from If waker care, if sodayne pale Coulour: Egerton Ms. 2711, f.66v (British Library)
Horses struggle in the mud in the small town of Bento Rodrigues after an iron mine tailings dam burst in Minas Gerais state, in southeastern Brazil. Union officials
representing workers at the mine said they feared that as many as 15
people might have died.: photo by Felipe Dana/AP, 5 November 2015
Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542): If waker care, if sodayne pale Coulour: Egerton Ms. 2711, f.66v (British Library)
Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542): If waker care, if sodayne pale Coulour: Egerton Ms. 2711, f.66v (British Library)
Horses struggle in the mud at the small town of Bento Rodrigues after a tailings dam burst at an iron mine in Minas Gerais state, Brazil, Friday: photo by Felipe Dana/AP, 5 November 2015
25 minutes to escape: Brazilian village destroyed in dam deluge: Stephen Eisenhammer, Reuters, 6 November 2015 10:26pm EST
BENTO RODRIGUES, Brazil
|
The water from a broken dam holding waste water from the nearby Samarco mine in Minas Gerais state moved fast down the valley. A flood believed to be some 20 meters (65 feet) high swept through the village of 600, destroying homes and livelihoods within minutes.
Apart from a few houses spared by being on higher ground, homes are little more than bare walls now. A thick sludge of water and iron ore tore off the roofs and settled over the village like hardening wax, leaving twisted cars perched awkwardly in its wake. Helicopters buzzed overhead, searching for the lost 24 hours after the deluge.
One person has been confirmed dead, 13 are reported missing and many more remain unaccounted for after two tailings dams burst on Thursday at the Samarco mine owned by two of the world's largest miners, Vale SA and BHP Billiton.
A school in the line of the advancing water was hastily evacuated by teachers, an act which is thought to have saved dozens of lives. "There are heroes in this tragedy," the local mayor Duarte Júnior said in acknowledgement of their actions.
Six villages were hit by the flood as 60 million cubic meters of waste water swamped the region. Residents were evacuated to a gymnasium in the nearby town of Mariana, where hundreds of mattresses lined the floor and medical staff bustled in white coats attending to the injured. Donations of water, clothes and blankets poured in from well-wishers with many taking the day off work to help those who have lost everything.
"There's nothing left in my village. Just memories," Soraia Souza, 24, from the village of Paracatu de Baixo, told Reuters while holding an 18-month-old baby wearing just a diaper.
At the site of the worst devastation, twenty rescue workers sweated in the humid Brazilian heat, trying to rescue a horse trapped in the thick, heavy mud. With a rope wrapped around it, twenty men and women tugged to exhaustion, but the animal wouldn’t budge. As dusk turned to dark, hopes the horse could be saved wavered.
"We've tried everything, there's nothing more we can do," said Maximiliano Inacio, a local firefighter.
Horses
struggle in the mud at the small town of Bento Rodrigues after a
tailings dam burst at an iron mine in Minas Gerais state, Brazil, Friday: photo by Felipe Dana/AP, 5 November 2015
Video by the broadcaster TV Globo showed the sludgy flooding that resulted from a burst tailings dam in southeast Brazil on Thursday: photo by TV screengrab/Agence France-Presse, 5 November 2015
Search ongoing for missing in Brazil mine disaster, death toll uncertain: Stephen Eisenhammer, Reuters, 6 November 2015 8:12pm EST
BENTO RODRIGUES, Brazil
|
Rescue
teams searched through mud and debris on Friday for people still missing
from a village devastated by the collapse of two dams at a Brazilian
mine owned by the world's largest mining company, BHP Billiton.
While only one worker has been confirmed dead, the local governor said the mining disaster caused the most environmental damage of any in the state's history. It could cost the mine's owners a fortune to clean up and repair
.
25 minutes to escape: Brazilian village destroyed in dam deluge: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 6 November 2015
Walls of water filled with mining waste cascaded downhill when the dams burst on Thursday, engulfing the village of Bento Rodrigues and its 600 residents in a sea of mud while also flooding others far removed from the open-pit mine.
Little remains of the village but ruined walls and cars lying twisted in sludge. Search helicopters buzzed overhead as rescuers tried to save a horse trapped in the mud.
"I heard
screaming and saw the water coming fast, about 15 to 20 meters high
(49-66 feet)," said survivor Antonio Santos, a construction worker who
was at home when the dams broke. Bento Rodrigues is about 93 miles (150
km) southeast of Belo Horizonte, Brazil's third-largest city and the
capital of the mining state of Minas Gerais.
"Within 10 minutes the whole lower part of the village was destroyed, about 80 percent of it," he said in a gymnasium crowded with survivors in the nearby city of Mariana.
VIDEO: Brazil dam burst buries town: image via Reuters Top New @Reuters, 6 November 2015
Santos said he knew of four people who were swept away, including two children and two adults in their 50s.
Mine operator Samarco's chief executive officer said a tremor in the vicinity of the mine may have caused the dams to burst, but that it was too early to establish the exact cause.
The company said one worker died and 13 were missing.
Regiâo atingida por Barragens da mineradora Samarco. Mariana (MG) -- area afetada pelo rompimento barragem no distrito do Bento Rodrigues, zona rural de Mariana, em Minas Gerais: photo by Antonio Cruz/Agencia Brasil Fotografia. 7 November 2015
Firefighters
initially put the death toll at two but later said they could not
immediately confirm more than one fatality connected to the mine
disaster.
They said the count could rise because many people were still unaccounted for in six villages hit by floods unleashed by the successive bursting of the two dams holding waste, or iron ore tailings, from the mine.
Samarco
is a 50-50 venture between BHP Billiton and Brazil's Vale, the world's
largest iron ore miner. The company said it had set no date to restart
the mine, which produces about 30 million tons of iron ore annually.
Output is shipped to Brazil's coast and converted into pellets for
export to steel mills.
The cleanup bill and potential environmental lawsuits could be more costly than the loss of output and come at a bad time for BHP Billiton and Vale, with iron ore prices at their lowest in a decade and one quarter of their 2011 level.
Regiâo atingida por Barragens da mineradora Samarco. Mariana (MG) -- area afetada pelo rompimento barragem no distrito do Bento Rodrigues, zona rural de Mariana, em Minas Gerais: photo by Antonio Cruz/Agencia Brasil Fotografia. 7 November 2015
A lawyer specializing in environmental and mining cases said it was too early to estimate the financial setback for the mining companies, since the cause of the disaster was still unknown.
"It impossible to calculate now, but it is not going to be cheap," said Danilo Miranda, of the Marcelo Tostes law firm.
The head of the local miners union, Ronaldo Bento, said it was too early to say whether the company had been negligent.
Shares of Vale closed down 5.7 percent in Sao Paulo trading and BHP Billiton also dropped 5.7 percent in New York.
A Minas Gerais state prosecutor in charge of environmental crimes, Carlos Ferreira Pinto, said he would seek a temporary suspension of Samarco's license on Monday.
Samarco CEO Ricardo Vescovi said the company had been working on the drainage system for the dams. But both had valid licenses from environmental authorities, who last inspected them in July, according to Samarco.
Regiâo atingida por Barragens da mineradora Samarco. Mariana (MG) -- area afetada pelo rompimento barragem no distrito do Bento Rodrigues, zona rural de Mariana, em Minas Gerais: photo by Antonio Cruz/Agencia Brasil Fotografia. 7 November 2015
The University of Sao Paulo's seismic center reported four weak tremors in the general area of the mine in the hour before the disaster. But Vescovi said there had been no sign of any breach in the dams immediately after the tremors occurred.
Analysts at Clarksons Platou Securities said the likelihood of a lengthy stoppage at the Samarco mine, which accounts for about one-fifth of the world's seaborne pellet market, could lift iron ore prices. Prices were not immediately affected, however, and continued to fall on Friday.
Pellet prices have plunged by one-third this year to their lowest in six years amid a global glut and waning Chinese demand.
Search ongoing for missing in Brazil mine disaster, death toll uncertain: image via Reuters Top New @Reuters, 6 November 2015
So-called
tailings ponds, masses of finely ground waste rock mixed with water
left over from extracting more valuable minerals, can contain harmful
chemicals, adding to fears of potential contamination from the Samarco
dam bursts.
The company sought to play down those fears, saying there were no chemical elements that posed health risks when the accident occurred.
It was the second major tailings dam disaster in Minas Gerais in 12 years. In 2003, 1.2 billion liters of waste from a tailings dam at a closed cellulose mill broke, flooding local rivers, cutting off fresh water to more than 600,000 people, and killing fish all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.
While only one worker has been confirmed dead, the local governor said the mining disaster caused the most environmental damage of any in the state's history. It could cost the mine's owners a fortune to clean up and repair
.
25 minutes to escape: Brazilian village destroyed in dam deluge: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 6 November 2015
Walls of water filled with mining waste cascaded downhill when the dams burst on Thursday, engulfing the village of Bento Rodrigues and its 600 residents in a sea of mud while also flooding others far removed from the open-pit mine.
Little remains of the village but ruined walls and cars lying twisted in sludge. Search helicopters buzzed overhead as rescuers tried to save a horse trapped in the mud.
Regiâo
atingida por Barragens da mineradora Samarco. Mariana (MG) -- area
afetada pelo rompimento barragem no distrito do Bento Rodrigues, zona
rural de Mariana, em Minas Gerais: photo by Antonio Cruz/Agencia Brasil Fotografia. 7 November 2015
"Within 10 minutes the whole lower part of the village was destroyed, about 80 percent of it," he said in a gymnasium crowded with survivors in the nearby city of Mariana.
VIDEO: Brazil dam burst buries town: image via Reuters Top New @Reuters, 6 November 2015
Mine operator Samarco's chief executive officer said a tremor in the vicinity of the mine may have caused the dams to burst, but that it was too early to establish the exact cause.
The company said one worker died and 13 were missing.
Regiâo atingida por Barragens da mineradora Samarco. Mariana (MG) -- area afetada pelo rompimento barragem no distrito do Bento Rodrigues, zona rural de Mariana, em Minas Gerais: photo by Antonio Cruz/Agencia Brasil Fotografia. 7 November 2015
They said the count could rise because many people were still unaccounted for in six villages hit by floods unleashed by the successive bursting of the two dams holding waste, or iron ore tailings, from the mine.
Scores missing as deadly mudslide flattens Brazil village: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 6 November 2015
The cleanup bill and potential environmental lawsuits could be more costly than the loss of output and come at a bad time for BHP Billiton and Vale, with iron ore prices at their lowest in a decade and one quarter of their 2011 level.
Regiâo atingida por Barragens da mineradora Samarco. Mariana (MG) -- area afetada pelo rompimento barragem no distrito do Bento Rodrigues, zona rural de Mariana, em Minas Gerais: photo by Antonio Cruz/Agencia Brasil Fotografia. 7 November 2015
A lawyer specializing in environmental and mining cases said it was too early to estimate the financial setback for the mining companies, since the cause of the disaster was still unknown.
"It impossible to calculate now, but it is not going to be cheap," said Danilo Miranda, of the Marcelo Tostes law firm.
The head of the local miners union, Ronaldo Bento, said it was too early to say whether the company had been negligent.
MG: 5 preguntas sem resposta sobre rompimento de barragens #BentoRodrigues #Mariana: image via Terra Noticias Verified account @TerraNoticias, 6 November 2015
A Minas Gerais state prosecutor in charge of environmental crimes, Carlos Ferreira Pinto, said he would seek a temporary suspension of Samarco's license on Monday.
Samarco CEO Ricardo Vescovi said the company had been working on the drainage system for the dams. But both had valid licenses from environmental authorities, who last inspected them in July, according to Samarco.
Regiâo atingida por Barragens da mineradora Samarco. Mariana (MG) -- area afetada pelo rompimento barragem no distrito do Bento Rodrigues, zona rural de Mariana, em Minas Gerais: photo by Antonio Cruz/Agencia Brasil Fotografia. 7 November 2015
The University of Sao Paulo's seismic center reported four weak tremors in the general area of the mine in the hour before the disaster. But Vescovi said there had been no sign of any breach in the dams immediately after the tremors occurred.
Analysts at Clarksons Platou Securities said the likelihood of a lengthy stoppage at the Samarco mine, which accounts for about one-fifth of the world's seaborne pellet market, could lift iron ore prices. Prices were not immediately affected, however, and continued to fall on Friday.
Pellet prices have plunged by one-third this year to their lowest in six years amid a global glut and waning Chinese demand.
Search ongoing for missing in Brazil mine disaster, death toll uncertain: image via Reuters Top New @Reuters, 6 November 2015
The company sought to play down those fears, saying there were no chemical elements that posed health risks when the accident occurred.
It was the second major tailings dam disaster in Minas Gerais in 12 years. In 2003, 1.2 billion liters of waste from a tailings dam at a closed cellulose mill broke, flooding local rivers, cutting off fresh water to more than 600,000 people, and killing fish all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.
(Additional
reporting by Ricardo Moraes in Mariana and Davide Scigliuzzo in New
York; writing by Brad Haynes and Anthony Boadle, editing by Jeffrey
Benkoe, Tom Brown and Ken Wills)
Regiâo atingida por Barragens da mineradora Samarco. Mariana (MG) -- area afetada pelo rompimento barragem no distrito do Bento Rodrigues, zona rural de Mariana, em Minas Gerais: photo by Antonio Cruz/Agencia Brasil Fotografia. 7 November 2015
Desperate search for Brazil mudslide survivors: image via Agence France-Presse @AFP, 6 November 2015
David Beckham waves toward his fans while on his way back after playing a charity match to collect funds for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) at the ancient city of Bhaktapur, Nepal on Friday: photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters, 6 November 2015
Emaciated horses struggle in the mud in the small town of Bento Rodrigues after an iron mine tailings dam burst in Minas Gerais state, in southeastern Brazil... Suche a terrible thing ...
ReplyDeleteI'm with you, L'Enfant.
ReplyDeleteOnce the tailings pond retaining walls started to go, the mine managers knew a world of noxious wastewater and mineral residue -- 55 million stinking cubic metres of the foul stuff to be exact, merely in the first rupture, and then another seven million cubic metres when a second reservoir was quickly breached as well -- was on its way to the towns and villages in the valley below.
The village of Bento Rodrigues lies just two km down the valley, directly in the path of the racing wall of poison sludge.
If the management of the mine had had an alarm or other warning system, they might have had a chance to spare many lives. But there was no such system, as the mine company had to admit after the fact. Instead, we are meant to rest secure in the assurance that they, uh, made a few phone calls.
This local and intense case of the devastation of Earth, largely unmarked in the weekend's mayfly-attention-span trendmap, represents, not that anybody needs me to explain it, business as usual in our marvelously smart millennial world.
The vast Samarco iron mine is jointly owned by two oversized corporate "bodies", the global mining companies BHP Billiton of Australia and Vale of Brazil. The iron pellets produced from its ores go largely to supply the industrial needs of China.
China, as we know, "needs" to keep turning out carbon-emitting "product" (for the good of "the economy", yeah?).
Australia, as we know, "needs" to assist China, with all possible (i.e. profitable) conveniences of facilitation, in the grand project of totally polluting the planet as rapidly as is technologically possible.
These particular "needs" (that is, economic objectives) would obviously qualify (i.e. comfortably allow) the occasional "isolated" local mishap (i.e. hideous "accident") to come under the heading of that beautiful catch-all, "the greater good" (as of course specified in the grand corporate master-plan of Universal Extraction).
Those who profit from the creation of desolation are of course most commonly to be found a world away from the scenes of the transgression -- on a jet, in a board room, on a yacht, at a casino, on an island retreat.
I'm sure they'd love to hear from each and every one of us, though, their fellow denizens of the global village, about the death throes of those two horses caught in paralyzing viscous human-produced scum -- the scum, indeed, of the Earth.
At last sad enumeration, there were still 28 people missing and unaccounted for in Bento Rodrigues, five of them children, possibly including the former owner of that toxic-muck-encrusted bike.
__
By the by, about the Wyatt, no mysterious connection across the centuries between the poem and the mine disaster was meant to be implied. Simply that a thing had happened to Wyatt that had, figuratively speaking, knocked the breath out of him (coming close to being beheaded will do that to a fellow, one supposes), and here he declares, possibly merely in an attempt to convince himself, that he's now ready to get back up, dust himself off, carry on. Had he not been quite brilliant at getting on with it, he'd likely not have survived as long as he did. Which was, at that, not very long.
ReplyDeleteNothing so extreme as that here, but imagine the surprise when, thanks to the wonders of degenerating cognitive association, along with the terrible pictures of the struggling horses came, as if out of the depths, the Wyatt lines, wiggling insidiously into the permanently scrambled cranial noodleroni, knocking out the breath yet again, awakening all the care in the world one more time, and once more inducing the deathly pallor which is beginning to feel like a cheap knock-off brand of foundation make-up, brought on these days by nothing more than the daunting prospect of getting through a rainy afternoon, here beyond the pale, by the roaring freeway feeder, in the haunted house.
3. A rescue worker touches the face of a horse as they try to save it in Bento Rodrigues district, which was covered with mud after a dam owned by Vale SA and BHP Billiton burst on November 6, 2015.
ReplyDeletehttp://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/photo/2015/11/a-dam-bursts-releasing-a-deadly-flo/b03_RTX1V3U5/main_900.jpg?1447095550
8. A dog sits in a destroyed house in the flooded town of Bento Rodrigues, on November 8, 2015.
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/photo/2015/11/a-dam-bursts-releasing-a-deadly-flo/b08_AP214853390919/main_900.jpg?1447095550
10. Brazilian firemen rescue a foal (left) which remained next to its mother after a dam burst in the village of Bento Rodrigues, on November 6, 2015.
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/photo/2015/11/a-dam-bursts-releasing-a-deadly-flo/b10_496017028/main_900.jpg?1447095550
11. Brazilian firemen rescue a foal which was trapped in the mud on November 6, 2015.
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/photo/2015/11/a-dam-bursts-releasing-a-deadly-flo/b11_496017282/main_900.jpg?1447088831
20. People carry an injured dog they rescued from the flooded town of Bento Rodrigues on November 7, 2015
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/photo/2015/11/a-dam-bursts-releasing-a-deadly-flo/b20_AP42534672372/main_900.jpg?1447088832
23.Horses struggle in the mud in the flooded town of Bento Rodrigues on November 6, 2015.
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/photo/2015/11/a-dam-bursts-releasing-a-deadly-flo/b23_AP246776257613/main_900.jpg?1447088832
If waker care, if sodayne pale Coulour
ReplyDelete. . . . .
Be signe of love then do I love agayne.
Tom,
Yes to setting Wyatt beside these photos ---- for which all thanks over there "by the roaring freeway feeder. . ."
Thanks, Steve.
ReplyDeleteYes, what was the expression in novels?
"The sight was almost too much to behold. S/he was made to blanch..."