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Roundup: Death toll of burst tailing dams reaches three, 24 still missing in Brazil

Xinhua, November 10, 2015 Adjust font size:

The death toll of the tailing dams rupture which hit the Brazilian town of Mariana last week reached three, authorities confirmed on Monday.

All the three victims worked for mining company Samarco, owner of the two tailing dams.

In addition, 24 people remain missing, among whom are residents of the affected areas and workers in the dam. There are five children among the missing. A total of 612 people have been left homeless.

The incident occurred on Thursday afternoon, when Samarco's two tailing dams burst, leading to a wave of mud and iron ore mining residues which hit a residential neighborhood in Mariana, Minas Gerais state.

The mud continued to flow and reached the Doce River, which flows to another state, which means the residues affected a number of other towns as well, damaging water distribution in some areas.

According to the most recent estimates, some 62 million cubic meters of mud and mining residues were released by the dams' rupture, making the incident the worst environmental disaster in the history of Minas Gerais state.

The Minas Gerais Environment Secretariat said on Monday that Samargo had been under embargo in the region since Friday. The company cannot operate its mine in the region until all the damages caused by the dam ruptures are repaired.

Samarco can only carry out actions to minimize the impact of the episode and prevent further damages. There is still a risk of bursting in a third tailings dam owned by Samarco in the area, which scares residents of Mariana.

The cause of the dams' rupture remains unknown. Even though tremors were registered before the incident, they were minor (the strongest reached 2.6 in the Richter scale). Tremors of low intensity are common in Minas Gerais state.

According to the Sao Paulo University Seismology Center, it is still not possible to establish any relations between the tremors and the rupture of the two dams.

However, as low intensity tremors like those which affected the area on Thursday only rarely cause any sort of structural damages, the possibility of connection between the tremors and the dam disaster is small, the Seismology Center said. Endi