Watch Out for the Tailings Pond, a Sharp Edge Hanging over Our Heads: Lessons Learned and Perceptions from the Brumadinho Tailings Dam Failure Disaster

Deqiang Cheng,Yifei Cui,Javed Iqbal,Zhenhong Li

doi:10.3390/rs13091775

Abstract

A catastrophic tailings dam failure disaster occurred in Brumadinho, Brazil on 25 January 2019, which resulted in over 270 casualties, 24,000 residents evacuated, and a huge economic loss. Environmental concerns were raised for the potential pollution of water due to tailings waste entering the Paraopeba River. In this paper, a detailed analysis has been carried out to investigate the disaster conditions of the Brumadinho dam failure using satellite images with different spatial resolutions. Our in-depth analysis reveals that the hazard chain caused by this failure contained three stages, namely dam failure, mudflow, and the hyperconcentrated flow in the Paraopeba River. The variation characteristics of turbidity of the Rio Paraopeba River after the disaster have also been investigated using high-resolution remote sensing images, followed by a qualitative analysis of the impacts on the downstream reservoir of the Retiro Baixo Plant that was over 300 km away from the dam failure origin. It is believed that, on the one hand, the lack of dam stability management at the maintenance stage was the main cause of this disaster. On the other hand, the abundant antecedent precipitation caused by extreme weather events should be a critical triggering factor. Furthermore, the spatiotemporal pattern mining of global tailings dam failures revealed that the Brumadinho dam disaster belonged to a Consecutive Hot Spot area, suggesting that the regular drainage inspection, risk assessment, monitoring, and early warning of tailings dam in Consecutive Hot Spot areas still need to be strengthened for disaster mitigation.

Highlights

Tailings are the material left after the valuable parts have been separated from the uneconomic or low-economic ore
The dam released a mudflow of tailings after the dam failure (Figure 7b-A)
Tailings reservoir materials are easy to cause harm to the environment, and damfailure disasters often occur in production mining areas where there are population and production equipment

Summary

Introduction

Tailings are the material left after the valuable parts have been separated from the uneconomic or low-economic ore. 2021, 13, 1775 tailings dam is a dangerous source of man-made mudflow with high potential energy. The failure of the tailings dam is one of the most dangerous disasters causing serious accidents. Tailings dams are considered more vulnerable than hydraulic dams due to the lack of regulations on specific design criteria, stability requirements regarding monitoring during the construction and maintenance process, and high potential of pollution due to its filled material (solid waste) [1]. Brumadinho is a Brazilian municipality, located near the Paraopeba River at an altitude of 880 m. It belongs to the microregion of Belo Horizonte, Metropolitana de Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil (Figure 1). Just after noon on 25 January 2019, the Brumadinho dam disaster occurred when Dam I (Figures 2 and 3), a tailings dam at the Córrego do Feijão iron ore mine owned by Vale, 9 km (5.6 mi) east of Brumadinho (Figure 1b), suffered a catastrophic failure [13].

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Conclusion