Just four days after the breach in Brumadinho, Lanchotti led the task force in making its first arrests – three employees from Vale, and two engineers from German company TÜV SÜD.
These engineers had been hired by Vale to make the regular, legally required safety inspections of the dam, as well as signing off any safety certificates.
A few days after the arrests, Vale’s lawyers had secured the release of all five men.
Then, a little over a week later, parts of the men’s interviews were leaked to the Brazilian media outlet, Globo.
Part of the leak was an email exchange from just two days before the breach, discussing irregular readings on automated monitoring equipment next to the dam.
One of the arrested engineers from TÜV SÜD, Makoto Namba, was asked by police, given those readings, what he would do if his son was working at the site of the dam.
He replied: “After confirming the readings, I would immediately call my son to evacuate the place as well as calling the emergency department at Vale, responsible for triggering the emergency action plan.”
In his testimony, Makoto Namba also said he felt under pressure from a Vale employee to sign off the dam’s safety report back in June 2018. He said he told the employee he would only sign if safety recommendations were addressed.
Both Vale and TÜV SÜD told the BBC they could not comment on the specifics of the investigation until the facts had been verified by the authorities.
An employee of the mine, who asked to remain anonymous, told the BBC that water from a natural spring on a hill above the dam had been seeping on to it. He said a pipe that had been installed at the spring to carry the water away safely had been leaking.
“There was a spring above the dam, but the pipe was broken,” he says.
“The water was falling directly on to the dam. So much so that the middle of the dam was no longer dry. This was more than a month ago.”
Prof Carlos Martinez, an expert on mining dams, says that this would be a reason to immediately evacuate the area.
“This would be unacceptable. Constant water flow coming from a spring would increase the pressure in the dam,” he says.
“The remains of iron ore that exist in these dams normally bond with the sand and prevent water from draining properly. It clogs the filters, it turns it into something similar to a pressure cooker. The area should have been evacuated.”
The Brazilian press has also reported that federal police were investigating suggestions that water might have found its way into the dam from natural springs.
In a statement to the BBC, Vale said: “There was no record of an increase in the water level in the dam mass. On the contrary, the data indicates a reduction in the water level in the main section of the structure.”
For Lanchotti one of the key problems is that big businesses are allowed to self-regulate when it comes to safety and risk management.
“Often the government agencies do not carry out inspections, but instead delegate this responsibility back to the companies themselves, to monitor their own activities.
“Unfortunately, recent events have shown that this form of self-monitoring is simply not effective.”
With just 35 government inspectors for more than 1,000 active and non-active mines across Brazil, most companies hire their own private inspectors to sign off the paperwork.
In the case of Vale, it was the German company TÜV SÜD.
Lanchotti argues that more effective government inspection is needed.
from Viral Update News https://ift.tt/2GX2UTl
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