The Minas Gerais state fire department, which gave the latest confirmed death toll, also said 23 people had been sent to hospitals. All of those missing are Vale employees or contractors, a police spokesman said. Minas Gerais is still recovering from the 2015 collapse of a larger dam that killed 19 people in Brazil’s worst environmental disaster. Schvartsman said on Friday the dam that burst was being decommissioned and its capacity was about a fifth of the total waste spilled at Samarco. The latest dam collapse “may completely change the course of those talks,” federal prosecutor Jose Adercio Sampaio told Reuters.

Source: Dhaka Tribune January 27, 2019 04:30 UTC