{"id":16718,"date":"2015-11-06T09:00:44","date_gmt":"2015-11-06T09:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=16718"},"modified":"2015-11-06T09:00:44","modified_gmt":"2015-11-06T09:00:44","slug":"bento-rodrigues-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2015\/11\/06\/bento-rodrigues-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Bento Rodrigues: a disastrous tailings dam failure in Brazil"},"content":{"rendered":"
Bento Rodrigues<\/h5>\n

There are reports this morning<\/a> of a disastrous tailings dam failure<\/a> affecting the town of Bento Rodrigues in Brazil.\u00a0 Current reports suggest that at least 15 people have been killed and as many as 45 more may be missing.<\/p>\n

The mudslides that struck the town appear to have been generated by the collapse of the tailings dam associated with the Germano mine, owned by Samarco, which in turn is a joint venture between Vale of Brazil and BHP of Australia.\u00a0 This is a Google Earth image of the setting, although note that this is a couple of years old:<\/p>\n

\"Bento<\/a>

Bento Rodrigues from Google Earth<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The best gallery that I have seen is on the uol.com.br<\/a> website, from which these images are taken.\u00a0 The damage looks near apocalyptic:-<\/p>\n

\"Bento<\/a>

Bento Rodrigues talings dam failure via uol.com.br<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

\"Bento<\/a>

Bento Rodrigues tailings dam failure via uol.co.br<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

In many ways this event is reminiscent of the dreadful tailings dam failure at Ajkai Timfoldgyar in Hungary in 2010<\/a>, which I covered extensively at the time<\/a>.\u00a0 Back in 2009 I wrote about an academic study that had been published in a conference in Alberta that suggested that the frequency of tailings dam failures increases when commodities prices fall<\/a>.\u00a0 The peak in tailings dam failures occurs about two years after the peak in commodities prices.\u00a0 I wrote:<\/p>\n

The relationship between the peak in prices an the peak in accidents is ascribed by the authors to:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    \n
  1. \n

    The rush to mine quickly means that design and construction standards may be low;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n

  2. \n

    Rapid turn-over of key staff as new (presumably lucrative) opportunities arise during the boom;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n

  3. \n

    The boom drives the development of resources in areas that are known to be difficult;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n

  4. \n

    after the boom there are pressures to cut costs as commodity prices decline;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n

  5. \n

    The boom drives the use of inappropriate designs imported from other locations;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n

  6. \n

    There may be a lack of independent review, presumably to avoid the time delays and costs associated with this.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The prices of commodities are currently very low.\u00a0 Iron ore commodities prices peaked in 2011.\u00a0 It would be interesting to see images of the dam itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Yesterday a catastrophic tailings dam failure led to mudflows that swept through the town of Bento Rodrigues in Brazil. At least 15 people were killed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":16726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[102,469,205,122,230],"class_list":["post-16718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-brazil","tag-featured","tag-mining","tag-south-america","tag-tailings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}