Mauro Pimentel / AFP | A vigil for victims and the missing following the collapse of a dam near the city of Brumadinho in Brazil is held on January 29, 2019. Five people were arrested Tuesday in connection with the collapse of a Brazilian dam as the death toll rose to at least 84 and the carcasses of fish were seen floating in a river downstream that an indigenous community depends on for food and water. Advertising Read more The dam that held back iron ore waste, owned and operated by big mining company Vale SA, collapsed Friday, burying a company cafeteria and other Vale buildings and inundating part of the small southeastern city of Brumadinho. Grieving relatives buried some of the victims in Brumadinho and rescue teams continued a delicate search through swaths of muck for more victims or survivors. Lt. Flavio Godinho of the Minas Gerais state civil defense agency said Tuesday evening that the number of confirmed dead had risen to 84 from 65. He said the number of missing stood at 276. The dead fish and trash were seen by a reporting team for The Associated Press about 18 kilometers (11 miles) downstream from the dam along the banks of the Paraopeba River. The Pataxo Indians living alongside the river who use it to fish, bathe and gather water for the plants they cultivate as food were told by Brazilian environmental officials that they should no longer do so, said Hayo, the village chief who goes by one name. "We used the river to take baths, to fish, to water our plants and now we can't do any of that," said Hayo, wearing a large feathered headdress and a red and black-beaded necklace. "We can't even water our plants because they say it damages the soil." Two agents with the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, the country's environmental enforcement agency, took water samples and talked with tribe members but said they were not authorized to speak about their findings. In a statement sent to The Associated Press on Tuesday, the agency said it asked Vale to "remove the dead fish, which are having an impact on the indigenous population." The statement gave no details about the water tests and did not say whether tribal members had been told the water was unhealthy. Five arrested The signs of possible ecological consequences came as the arrests of company workers with links to the dam were made in Sao Paulo and in the state of Minas Gerais. Three of the arrested worked for Vale, the company said, adding that it was cooperating with investigating authorities. A German company that has inspected the dam said two of its employees were arrested. The Munich-based TUEV Sued company declined to specify whether the arrested staff were from its German headquarters or its Brazilian branch. In ordering the arrests, Minas Gerais state judge Perla Saliba Brito wrote that the disaster could have been avoided. It's not believable that "dams of such magnitude, run by one of the largest mining companies in the world, would break suddenly without any indication of vulnerability," the judge wrote in the decision, according to news portal UOL. Authorities said the five will be detained for 30 days while officials investigate possible criminal responsibility. At a cemetery in Brumadinho, 15 freshly dug graves awaited the remains of some of those killed. Wailing in grief at the cemetery was the wife of Edgar Carvalho Santos, one of the mining company's workers whose body has been found. "He did not deserve this, he did not deserve it!" she sobbed. Friends and family members prevented reporters from approaching the woman. One woman told Santos' wife that "this was not a tragedy, it's a crime." It was a sign of the growing anger directed at Vale over the disaster. Vale is the world's largest producer of iron ore, which is the raw ingredient for steel. The company is one of Brazil's largest businesses and a key employer in Brumadinho, but many residents have complained that a siren which should have gone off to warn people to evacuate never sounded Friday. Military police Col. Evandro Borges told reporters that most of the people missing were Vale employees. Many employees were eating lunch when the dam collapsed, burying a cafeteria and other company buildings. The company's American depository shares on the New York Stock Exchange were up 3 percent Tuesday afternoon on the New York Stock Exchange, to $11.54 each, after falling nearly 18 percent on Monday. (AP) Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morning Subscribe<doc-sep>SÃO PAULO—The death toll from the Brumadinho tailings dam disaster in Brazil rose to 99 on Wednesday, with another 259 missing and feared dead, the country’s civil-defense authorities said. The dam, owned by Brazilian iron-ore giant Vale SA, burst on Friday, burying the company’s local offices, a busy lunchroom and a nearby village under a thick layer of reddish-brown muck. Rescue workers have said that there is little chance any of the people still buried under the sea of sludge are alive and that the number of dead is expected to rise over coming days, as rescue efforts shifted to where the lunchroom swept away by a tide of mud probably settled. An official close to the case said the final death toll could be over 300. Brazil’s government took further action Wednesday to help people affected by the disaster, approving programs to aid fishermen and farmers in the region, while also developing a plan to inspect 3,386 dams around the country that pose a potential risk to human life. Financial markets reacted well Wednesday to a plan announced Tuesday evening by Vale Chief Executive Fabio Schvartsman to accelerate its program to dismantle 10 dams similar to the one that collapsed in Brumadinho, while halting all mining activity near them. Vale shares closed 9% higher at 46.60 reais ($12.65). The company’s stock price plummeted on Monday, losing almost one-quarter of its value, then rose nearly 1% on Tuesday. “We believe the decommissioning of these dams is a prudent move by Vale; reducing the risk of another dam collapse is well worth the $1.3 billion Vale will spend to decommission these structures,” said Christopher LaFemina, an analyst at Jefferies, in a note. The plan will cost about 5 billion reais ($1.3 billion), halt about 10% of Vale’s annual production and take one to three years to complete, Mr. Schvartsman said. The company also said it would increase output at other facilities to offset the loss of production. Local residents, though, said they want the company to finish more quickly. “They have to get rid of these dams right away, in less than three years,” said Silvio Campos, 70, a novelist who lives in the area near another mining dam. “I’m afraid. Everyone here is so sad, and there’s no hope. The development created by Vale usually doesn’t compensate for the risks it creates.” The company had already stopped using the type of dam that collapsed Friday in Brumadinho, known as an upstream dam, about three years ago after a similar dam burst about 80 miles away in a town called Mariana, killing 19 people and spewing a river of mining waste that contaminated hundreds of miles of river valleys. Upstream dams are cheaper to build than other types, but they are more prone to failure, according to experts. After the Mariana accident, Vale began the process of decommissioning, or dismantling, the 19 upstream dams it owned at the time, and had already decommissioned nine of them by the time of the Brumadinho disaster, according to Mr. Schvartsman. Mr. Schvartsman said the company didn’t carry out the process more quickly because safety audits of the dams showed them to be in good condition. Write to Jeffrey T. Lewis at jeffrey.lewis@wsj.com and Paulo Trevisani at paulo.trevisani@wsj.com<doc-sep>The rescue and recovery team said that 248 people were now listed as missing. The death toll from a dam burst in the Brazilian town of Brumadinho rose to 115 people on Friday, according to the team tasked with recovering bodies from the site. The rescue and recovery team said that 248 people were now listed as missing, a number that grew by 10 after miner Vale SA, which owned the dam, identified additional workers as unaccounted for.<doc-sep>
Members of a rescue team search for victims after a tailings dam owned by Brazilian mining company Vale SA collapsed, in Brumadinho, Brazil January 28, 2019. Adriano Machado | Reuters A dam collapse connected to an iron ore mine owned by Vale has killed dozens of people in southeastern Brazil and left rescue workers with little hope of finding survivors among the hundreds still missing. Shares of Vale plummeted amid a wave of investment bank downgrades, as fines and penalties began to mount and the ultimate impact on Vale's finances remained uncertain. The tragedy is the second major disaster linked to Brazilian mining giant Vale in about three years. In 2015, another dam at the Samarco mine jointly owned by Vale and BHP Billiton burst, killing 19 people in Minas Gerais state and causing Brazil's worst environmental disaster. In both cases, a dam holding back a tailing pond burst, spilling torrents of sludge into the surrounding area. The reservoirs contain byproducts from mining operations known as tailings. The collapse at Vale's Corrego do Feijao mine near the city of Brumadinho on Friday, also in Minas Gerais, was not as large as the 2015 Samarco disaster, but it has proven far more deadly. Residents are seen in an area next to a dam owned by Brazilian miner Vale SA that burst, in Brumadinho, Brazil January 25, 2019. Washington Alves | Reuters By Monday, Minas Gerais fire department officials had confirmed at least 60 people dead, according to Reuters. About 300 people are still missing, and fire officials say they do not expect to find many survivors. At the time of the accident, the reservoir contained nearly 12 million cubic meters of tailings, compared with about 50 million cubic meters during the Samarco disaster. The dam was built in 1976 and purchased by Vale in 2001. It was slated to be decommissioned and was last certified as stable in September. According to Vale, the dam's safety rating was "in accordance with the world's best practices" and exceeded standards in Brazil. Financial impact likely "significant" The disaster has created a cloud of uncertainty around Vale's business. The stock price for the ADR traded in the U.S. was down more than $2, or 17 percent, on Monday, striking a new 52-week low at $11.24 per share. On Friday, the price plunged about 8 percent. Several investment banks downgraded shares of Vale, but struck a cautious note until investigations are complete. "The financial impact of Friday's dam failure is impossible to quantify at present, but it is likely to be significant. We would also expect some production disruptions and more stringent safety inspections in the Brazilian iron ore industry," investment bank Jefferies said in a research note on Sunday. Vale disclosed that judges have frozen about $2.9 billion in assets. Brazil's environmental protection bureau IBAMA and Minas Gerais have fined the company $66 million and $26 million, respectively. Aerial view of rail bridge taken down by a mudslide after the collapse of a dam at an iron-ore mine belonging to Brazil's giant mining company Vale near the town of Brumadinho, state of Minas Gerias, southeastern Brazil, on January 27, 2019. Mauro Pimentel | AFP | Getty Images