200 missing in Brazil as Vale dam breaks

Bloomberg

A tailings dam owned by miner Vale SA broke in the state of Minas Gerais on Friday, hitting a local community near the capital and echoing a similar accident that became Brazil’s biggest environmental disaster three years ago.
Approximately 200 people are missing, a spokesperson for emergency services in Minas Gerais state told Bloomberg, adding that poor mobile phone service in the area is making it difficult to get updates.
No casualties have been confirmed. Helicopter footage from local television showed several buildings leveled by a slide of mining waste, and a sea of mud blocking roads.
Minas Gerais has formed a crisis management group and sent first responders to the
affected area, according to a statement. Aircraft are doing flyovers as part of rescue operations, it said, without mentioning any deaths or injuries.
President Jair Bolsonaro intended to visit the disaster zone on Saturday, according to a spokesman. Earlier, the president said he had sent a team of high-ranking officials to the area, including the ministers of environment, and mines and energy. “Our biggest concern at the moment is to attend to possible victims of this serious tragedy,” he posted on his
twitter account.
In an emailed statement, Vale said there are possible victims among employees who were at an administrative facility hit by the mud. It added there’s no information about the cause of the accident.
The failed dam serves the Feijao mine, one of Vale’s smaller operations that produced 7.8 million tons of iron ore in 2017, according to the company. In Brazil’s largest-ever environmental catastrophe, another tailings dam collapsed near the municipality of Mariana, also in Minas Gerais state, in 2015. While the images of mud burying houses and cars are reminiscent of the 2015 disaster, the scale should be quite different.