BRUMADINHO - Grief over the
hundreds of Brazilians feared killed in last week's mining
disaster has quickly hardened into anger as victims' families
and politicians say iron ore miner Vale SA and
regulators have learned nothing from the recent past.
By Monday, firefighters in the state of Minas Gerais had
confirmed 60 people dead in Friday's disaster, in which a
tailings dam broke sending a torrent of sludge into the miner's
offices and the town of Brumadinho. Nearly 300 other people are
unaccounted for, and officials said it was unlikely that any
would be found alive.
Shares of Vale, the world's largest iron ore and nickel
producer, plummeted 21.5 percent in Monday trading on the Sao
Paulo stock exchange, erasing $16 billion in market
cap.
Brazil's top prosecutor, Raquel Dodge, said the company
should be held strongly responsible and criminally prosecuted.
Executives could also be personally held responsible, she said.
Brazil's Vice President Hamilton Mourao, who is acting
president since Monday morning when Jair Bolsonaro underwent
surgery, also said the government needs to punish those
responsible for the dam disaster.
In a tweet, Brazilian Senator Renan Calheiros asked Justice
Minister Sergio Moro "how many people should die before federal
police changes Vale management, before key evidence disappears."
Moro is a previous judge in charge of Brazil's largest-ever
corruption probe.
One of Vale's lawyers, Sergio Bermudes, told newspaper Folha
de S. Paulo that the executives should not leave the company and
that Calheiros was trying to profit politically from the
tragedy.
Vale Chief Executive Fabio Schvartsman said during a visit
to Brumadinho on Sunday that facilities there were built to code
and equipment had shown the dam was stable two weeks earlier.
The disaster at the Corrego do Feijao mine occurred less
than four years after a dam collapsed at a nearby mine run by
Samarco Mineracao SA, a joint venture by Vale and BHP Billiton
, killing 19 and filling a major river with toxic
sludge.
While the 2015 Samarco disaster dumped about five times more
mining waste, Friday's dam break was far deadlier, as the wall
of mud hit Vale's local offices, including a crowded cafeteria,
and tore through a populated area downhill.
"The cafeteria was in a risky area," Renato Simao de
Oliveiras, 32, said while searching for his twin brother, a Vale
employee, at an emergency response station.
"Just to save money, even if it meant losing the little
guy... These businessmen, they only think about themselves."
As search efforts continued on Monday, firefighters laid
down wood planks to cross a sea of sludge that is hundreds of
meters wide in places, to reach a bus in search of bodies
inside. Villagers discovered the bus as they tried to rescue a
nearby cow stuck in the mud.
Longtime resident Ademir Rogerio cried as he surveyed the
mud where Vale's facilities once stood on the edge of town.
"The world is over for us," he said. "Vale is the top mining
company in the world. If this could happen here, imagine what
would happen if it were a smaller miner."
Nestor José de Mury said he lost his nephew and coworkers in
the mud.
"I've never seen anything like it, it killed everyone," he
said.
SAFETY DEBATE
The board of Vale, which has raised its dividends over the
last year, suspended all shareholder payouts and executive
bonuses late on Sunday, as the disaster put its corporate
strategy under scrutiny.
"I'm not a mining technician. I followed the technicians'
advice and you see what happened. It didn't work," Vale CEO
Schvartsman said in a TV interview. "We are 100 percent within
all the standards, and that didn't do it."
Many wondered if the state of Minas Gerais, named for the
mining industry that has shaped its landscape for centuries,
should have higher standards.
"There are safe ways of mining," said Joao Vitor Xavier,
head of the mining and energy commission in the state assembly.
"It's just that it diminishes profit margins, so they prefer to
do things the cheaper way – and put lives at risk."
Reaction to the disaster could threaten the plans of
Brazil's newly inaugurated president to relax restrictions on
the mining industry, including proposals to open up indigenous
reservations and large swaths of the Amazon jungle for mining.
Mines and Energy Minister Bento Albuquerque proposed in an
interview late on Sunday with newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo
that the law should be changed to assign responsibility in cases
such as Brumadinho to the people responsible for certifying the
safety of mining dams.
"Current law does not prevent disasters like the one we saw
on Brumadinho", he said. "The model for verifying the state of
mining dams will have to be reconsidered. The model isn't good."
The ministry did not immediately respond to questions about
the interview.
German auditor TUV SUD said on Saturday it inspected the dam
in September and found all to be in order.