Five People Arrested After Brazil's Vale Dam Collapse--2nd Update
January 29 2019 - 12:15PM
Dow Jones News
By Jeffrey T. Lewis and Paulo Trevisani
SÃO PAULO -- Brazilian police arrested five people Tuesday in
connection with the deadly collapse of a dam owned by iron-ore
producer Vale SA, including employees of the mining company, as
investigators moved quickly to uncover the cause of the
disaster.
The number of people killed by the tide of mud and mining debris
that spilled from the burst dam had risen to 65 by Monday evening.
A spokesman for rescue workers said officials expected the death
toll to rise significantly Tuesday as searchers and trained dogs
locate some of the nearly 300 people who are still missing and
feared dead.
The dam's collapse on Friday swept away nearby offices and a
lunchroom belonging to Vale and sent a river of mud smashing into
parts of the small town of Brumadinho, in Minas Gerais state.
Police said two engineers working for a company hired by Vale to
inspect the dam before it had collapsed were arrested in São Paulo.
A spokesman for TÜV SÜD, a German auditor and certification
organization, said two of its workers who had assessed the dam in
June and September 2018 were arrested. Vale said TUV had said the
dam passed regulations.
TÜV's spokesman said the company regrets the collapse of the dam
and said it is collaborating with authorities. He declined to
comment further.
Three of Vale's employees were detained in or near the city of
Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais. Police also seized
documents and other items belonging to the five detainees.
Vale said in a statement that it is cooperating fully with
investigators.
The catastrophe came less than four years after a similar
accident at a nearby dam half-owned by Vale, in a town called
Mariana also in Minas Gerais state, which killed 19 people and
contaminated hundreds of miles of river valley with mining waste.
The government at the time, headed by then-President Dilma
Rousseff, was sharply criticized for its slowness in responding to
the accident.
No arrests were made during the probe of the Mariana accident,
and investigators initially were hampered by their lack of
knowledge and experience regarding Vale's internal processes,
according to José Adércio Leite Sampaio, a federal prosecutor who
worked on the earlier case.
Before Mariana, "we had never had to investigate such a big
environmental crime, we had no manual to use," Mr. Sampaio said.
"Now we have a road map to follow for investigations of this
size."
The police also seized documents and other materials Tuesday,
which could offer evidence if any crimes were committed, Mr.
Sampaio said.
The detainees will be questioned by prosecutors in Belo
Horizonte and can be held for as many as 30 days, according to
police. One reason the workers might have been arrested could be to
prevent them from destroying or removing evidence, or to shield the
detainees from possible pressure to modify their testimony,
according to one legal expert.
Brazil's federal government is also acting quickly to help
survivors and punish any wrongdoing. Brazil's top prosecutor said
Monday evening that she would pursue criminal charges against Vale
executives.
President Jair Bolsonaro, who was sworn in Jan. 1, formed a
crisis cabinet within hours of the accident in Brumadinho, and
ordered troops and rescue personnel to the site the same day. On
Tuesday his cabinet met to discuss measures to ensure the safety of
other tailings dams in Brazil.
Television news reports showed images of helicopters carrying
bodies pulled from the mud to areas where they can be placed in
refrigerated trucks and taken to morgues. Military firefighters
were shown wading through or clambering over a river of sludge,
often using long poles to both probe the muck and keep themselves
afloat
Three hundred more police arrived in the Brumadinho area
Tuesday, and another 400 will arrive Wednesday, to help prevent
possible looting of evacuated areas and to stop unauthorized people
from entering the so-called hot zone, among other tasks, according
to a police spokesman.
The accident hurt Vale's shares on Monday, losing about one
quarter of their value. The shares recovered ground Tuesday, and
were up about 3% at midday.
--Alistair MacDonald contributed to this article.
Write to Jeffrey T. Lewis at jeffrey.lewis@wsj.com and Paulo
Trevisani at paulo.trevisani@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 29, 2019 12:00 ET (17:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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