Precis

"I ended up with nothing but the clothes I had on. I lost everything I had at home, documents, photos of my children." - Survivor

"Of course it will affect our bottom line." - Andrew Mackenzie, BHP CEO

The Melbourne headquarters of Australian mining giant BHP is a world away from the small Brazilian village of Bento Rodrigues, but what happened in this faraway place will cost BHP billions.

"The mud would come and drag me down, I would come up, it would take me down again… I screamed, calling my children, calling them, but nobody answered." - Survivor

Three months ago a horror mudslide swept through the towns and villages in the Gualaxo River Valley in Brazil, destroying homes, businesses and taking the lives of 19 people.

A tailings dam, holding back more than 50 million cubic metres of mining waste collapsed, unleashing a wave of mud several metres high. The waste in the dam came from the huge open cut Samarco iron ore mine, half owned by Australia's BHP Billiton. Brazil's chief environment officer calls it the biggest environmental disaster in the country's mining history.

"This mud wave has killed anything that was alive in these water systems." - Marilene Ramos, Brazilian Environment Authority

Brazilian police have announced they will seek the arrest of six Samarco executives and managers on charges of negligent homicide, and offences against the environment.

"A dam doesn't break by chance…There is repeated, continual negligence in the actions of a company owned by Vale and BHP." - Brazilian Prosecutor

Reporter Ben Knight arrived in Brazil within days of the dam collapse as the search for victims continued in atrocious conditions. Now in his first report for Four Corners, he returns to Brazil to investigate whether multiple warning signs were ignored. What he finds is a catalogue of failure, where even the emergency alert system didn't work.

BHP has distanced itself from the operations of the mine, but the company's bottom line has taken a hit. This week BHP announced a $US5.7 billion half year loss, writing off more than a billion dollars due to the dam disaster.

And in a feature interview with the BHP CEO, Ben Knight asks if BHP is making good on the promises they have made to rebuild the lives and communities affected, and what responsibility it will take for the disaster.

Paula Alves donning motorcycle helmet and starting motorcycle

Music

09:00

BEN KNIGHT, REPORTER: Paula Alves saved for two years to buy this second-hand motorbike.

00:24

Music

00:29

Paula rides

BEN KNIGHT:  On the day she got it, she was so happy she gave it a name.

00:35

Paula 100%

PAULA ALVES: I just wanted to name it Berenice. I don't know. It suits it.

00:44

Paula shows painting

BEN KNIGHT: Paula could never have imagined that she and her motorbike would become national heroes in Brazil.

00:46

Her bravery, on the day a torrent of mud engulfed her village, has become folklore.

00:53

Paula points to a painting of the dam collapse

PAULA ALVES: Here are the people, the dogs, everyone running. This is me, warning the others. Me on my motorbike.

01:03

Recreation of day of dam collapse – Paula on bike

BEN KNIGHT: It was just after 3:30 on a Thursday afternoon. Paula Alves heard over a two-way radio

01:15

Smartphone footage. Dam collapse

that a tsunami of sludge was heading straight for Bento Rodrigues.

01:23

Recreation of day of dam collapse – Paula on bike

Instead of fleeing to higher ground, she rode towards the mudslide to warn others.

01:30

Paula 100%
Super: PAULA ALVES

PAULA ALVES : I got on my bike and rode around beeping and screaming, "The dam has burst! The dam has burst!"

01:44

Smartphone footage. Dam collapse

Music

01:53

BEN KNIGHT: For most of the 600 people living in Bento, Paula's warning was the only one they got:

01:57

Marinalva walking

like Marinalva Salgado, who was out walking with her grandson.

02:03

Marinalva 100%
Super:
MARINALVA SALGADO

MARINALVA SALGADO : Paula was already coming, honking the horn, because she had already heard that the dam had collapsed. She rode, honking the horn and screaming. So I ran to my house to save my mother.

02:10

Smart phone footage of the dam collapse

ONLOOKER : It burst!

VOICE ON RADIO : Get out! Get out of the truck!

ONLOOKER : It killed everyone! Mother of God.

02:22

Smart phone footage of sludge from dam collapse. Houses buckle under the sludge's pressure

BEN KNIGHT: Millions of cubic metres of sludge were surging through the village in a wave metres high.

02:31

Music

02:37

Priscila 100%
Super: PRISCILA BARROS

PRISCILA BARROS (crying) : I could see cars going down, metal, parts of pipes, concrete parts, concrete walls.

02:55

BEN KNIGHT: Priscila Barros still bears the scars from being dragged by the mud.

03:08

PRISCILA BARROS : And the mud would come and drag me down. I would come up, it would take me down again. It went like this for about three or four kilometres, something like that.

03:14

Marinalva 100%

MARINALVA SALGADO : We didn't know where people were, if people had been dragged by the mud. We were really worried. You could hear dogs howling, people screaming, calling for help.

03:27

Priscila with Kayque

BEN KNIGHT: Priscila Barros was looking after her son Kayque and his cousin when the wall of mud swept towards her house.

03:39

Priscila 100%

PRISCILA BARROS (crying) : The wave came and dragged us. We ended up at the house next to mine. And there I lost her and Kayque.

03:49

Pricila and Weslei

It was just me in the middle of nowhere. I screamed, calling my children, calling them, but nobody answered.

04:00

Kayque by car

BEN KNIGHT: Priscila's son Kayque was also dragged for three kilometres before he was rescued.

04:11

Footage of battered and bruised Kayque

His father Weslei is still haunted by that day.

07:17

Weslei 100%
Super: WESLEI BARROS

WESLEI BARROS (crying) : I was desperate inside the ambulance. I was looking at his eyes, and they were full of mud. His nose, his ears, all full of mud. His tummy was sore and he started crying. The more he cried, the more I couldn't hold myself.

04:24

Sebastiao 100%. Super:
SEBASTIAO BARROS
Grandfather

SEBASTIAO BARROS, KAYQUE'S GRANDFATHER (crying) : He came on the stretcher, all hurt. It's very hard. Everyone was crying. Thank God he survived.

04:43

Photo. Emanuele

BEN KNIGHT: While Kayque survived, his cousin Emanuele did not.

04:58

Weslei and Priscila

WESLEI BARROS (crying) : When I went to see my niece's body... The way I saw her: that was too much.

05:06

Photo. Tiago

BEN KNIGHT: Five-year-old Tiago Damasceno also died. He was last seen floating on a mattress on the mud. His body has not been found.

05:17

File footage. Village in aftermath of collapse

Music

05:28

Paula 100%

BEN KINGHT:  (To Paula Alves) What would have happened if the dam had burst at midnight, instead of 3:30 on a weekday afternoon?

05:40

PAULA ALVES : Everybody would have died, because there would be no way. We wouldn't know where to run to. We would have died while sleeping.

05:46

Aerial footage.  Fundão tailings dam after collapse

BEN KNIGHT: The source of the deadly torrent that swept through Bento Rodrigues lies just a few kilometres up the hill. The  Fundão tailings dam, which was holding back more than 50 million cubic metres of mining waste.

05:53

Music

06:11

Aerial. Samarco mine

06:15

BEN KNIGHT:  The waste in the dam came from the huge open-cut Samarco iron ore mine, half-owned by Australia's BHP Billiton.

06:17

Aerials. Rivers to coast. Sludge meets ocean

The torrent of sludge didn't just bury local villages. It swamped the local river system, all the way to the Atlantic coast 600 kilometres away.

06:32

Music

06:41

Marilene interview

BEN KNIGHT:  The head of the country's environmental authority, Marilene Ramos, says it's the biggest environmental disaster in Brazilian mining history.

06:53

Super: MARILENE RAMOS
President, IBAMA

MARILENE RAMOS, PRESIDENT, IBAMA: This mud wave has killed anything that was alive in these water systems; all the vegetation, trees, killed the animals to an extent that we don't really know yet.

07:02

Bento Rodrigues GVs after dam collapse

Music

07:21

BEN KNIGHT: For years the people of Bento Rodrigues feared the dam might burst. But they were repeatedly told there was nothing to worry about.

07:25

Paula Alves 100%

PAULA ALVES : When we had meetings with Samarco, we would ask, "Hey, guys, is there any risk of the dam bursting?" They would say, "You can relax. This dam will never burst."

07:36

Marinalva 100%

MARINALVA SALGADO : Two months before the disaster. they told us Bento was safe. That the dam would not fail. If ever anything happened, we would be evacuated.

07:45

Aerial. Collapsed dam

Music

07:54

BEN KNIGHT: But what the residents of Bento Rodrigues were not told is that the  Fundão dam had a long history of problems.

07:57

Pinto 100%

CARLOS EDUARDO PINTO, STATE ENVIRONMENTAL PROSECUTOR: A dam doesn't break by chance.

08:06

Super:
CARLOS EDUARDO PINTO
State Environmental Prosecutor

There was negligence in the monitoring of the operation. That negligence is not restricted to one single fact, or act, or one day. There is repeated, continual negligence in the actions of a company owned by Vale and BHP.

08:10

Mackenzie 100%. Super:
ANDREW MACKENZIE
CEO, BHP Billiton

ANDREW MACKENZIE, CEO, BHP BILLITON: People have been killed. People have lost loved ones. And that's something that, you know, that we have to bear, you know, as a company, as an owner of that dam, forever. And there's no- I can't talk about reversing that.

08:29

BEN KNIGHT: Was there repeated, continual negligence by Samarco?

08:43

ANDREW MACKENZIE: So I can't answer that question right now because we are conducting a very exhaustive investigation of the cause of this accident.

08:47

There's a wide range of claims swirling around and we need to make sense of them all and come up with what is the truth. I mean, the truth must come out.

08:56

Knight travels to Bento Rodriques

Music

09:07

BEN KNIGHT: Back in November, in the days after the dam's collapse, I came here to Bento Rodrigues to cover the disaster.

09:14

Mackenzie and mining company personnel at Bento Rodriques

BHP's chief executive Andrew Mackenzie was here too, promising to make it right.

09:23

Mackenzie holds press conference. Super:
November 2015

ANDREW MACKENZIE (Nov. 2015): The people of Brazil, the people of Mariana, have my absolute determination that we will fully play our part in helping to rebuild your homes, your community and your spirit.

09:29

Aftermath of collapse. Searching for villagers

09:45

BEN KNIGHT: The search was still going on for victims - in awful conditions.

09:50

Music

09:55

Ben Knight to camera in the midst of the mud-scarred landscape. Super:
November 2015
BEN KNIGHT

BEN KNIGHT (Nov. 2015): If you look over there you can see just how wide this avalanche was. You can see the devastation. So here now you have the result. And now there's the cleanup. It is hot, it's incredibly humid, it's raining right here at the moment. We have lightning over there. And there's the smell of death.

10:01

Survivors singing and holding candles during memorial service

[singing]

10:27

BEN KNIGHT: A week after the disaster, survivors gathered for a memorial mass in the nearby city of Mariana.

10:39

There was grief. But there was also fear of what lay ahead: for the people who lost everything and can never go home again; and also for the city of Mariana itself, utterly dependent on the mine that's now closed and with no idea of if, or when, it will open again.

10:49

Knight walks in Mariana

Music

11:13

BEN KNIGHT: Almost three months on, I'm back in Mariana.

11:18

GVs Mariana

Music

11:23

Knight to camera

BEN KNIGHT:  This is the city where most of the refugees from Bento Rodrigues are still living. They're in houses and flats that have been paid for by the mining company, but their lives are still in limbo. So I've come to find out how that happened; whether multiple warning signs of dangers at the dam were ignored, and whether the companies, including BHP, are living up to their promise to make it right.

11:30

Rainy countryside

Music

11:58

BEN KNIGHT:  The first thing I want to do is get back to Bento Rodrigues, but weeks of heavy rain have made the dirt roads impassable.

11:59

Knight boards helicopter

The only option is to see it from the air.

12:07

Helicopter takes off/ Aerials.  Fundão dam site

Music

12:12

BEN KNIGHT: It's also my first look at what used to be the  Fundão dam. It's a chilling sight.

12:17

Music

12:23

Knight in helicopter

BEN KNIGHT: When the dam broke, it was what's called a 'catastrophic failure', which seems obvious. But what it means is it all went at once, not in little bits, the whole lot. Which is why most of the people who were killed were in fact the mine workers who were working on the dam wall at the time that it went.

12:27

Aerials.  Fundão dam site

From the air, you can see how quickly the mudslide would have reached the village of Bento Rodrigues.

12:44

Music

12:52

Knight in helicopter

BEN KNIGHT:  When you see just how close the village is to what was the dam wall, it really is hard to understand how anyone managed to make it out in time.

13:00

Aerials. Bento Rodrigues

Music

13:09

BEN KNIGHT: Three months on: not much has changed here. It's pretty clear that Bento isn't coming back.

13:12

Marinalva and family walk

Now, refugees like Marinalva are living in the city of Mariana, in houses rented for them by the mining company Samarco.

13:23

Marinalva and family in Mariana house

She lives here with her five children and two grandchildren. Having lost their livelihood, they live on a company allowance. It's based on Brazil's minimum wage of around $280 a month.

13:39

Knight with Marinalva and family around laptop. Knight shows footage

They haven't been back to Bento since the dam collapsed.

13:55

MARINALVA SALGADO : Look at the water.

SALGADO FAMILY MEMBER : The bridge doesn't exist any more. Oh my God.

14:05

MARINALVA SALGADO : This was the entrance of our community business. I walked up that hill every day.

14:13

Marinalva holds her face in her hands

BEN KNIGHT: Is this the first time that you've seen pictures like this, of the village?

14:21

Knight with Marinalva and family around laptop

MARINALVA SALGADO : I haven't had the courage.

14:30

GVs Belo Horizonte

Music

14:33

BEN KNIGHT: It was the golden hills of this part of Brazil that sparked a gold rush in the 1700s, that lasted more than a century.

14:41

Cities like Belo Horizonte, the state capital, are built on the wealth of the gold and iron that's still being mined here.

14:50

And the mining industry is the backbone of the economy. It has enormous political clout. The name of the state, Minas Gerais, literally translates as 'General Mines.'

14:58

Exteror. State building

It's here in the capital that prosecutors are digging into the history of the  Fundão dam, and finding problems that go back to the beginning of its construction.

15:11

Carlos Eduardo Pinto [with translator] show maps and material to Ben Knight

TRANSLATOR: This is like a timeline of the complex that belongs to Samarco.

15:22

BEN KNIGHT: Carlos Eduardo Pinto is the state's environmental watchdog. His team is known as the 'Green Scorpions.' They're investigating not just Samarco and its owners, but also the state regulators who allowed the dam to be built.

15:28

Pinto 100%. Super:
CARLOS EDUARDO PINTO
State Environmental Prosecutor

CARLOS EDUARDO PINTO: I'm not sure how long it takes in Australia to approve a tailings dam. But here in Brazil, it should take longer than this one did. The environmental authority gave a blank cheque to Samarco, Vale and BHP to carry out the project and operate it, without the controls required under Brazilian law.

15:46

Promotional mining video. Super:
Promotional video

ANNOUNCER (promotional video): Open-pit mines are the largest sources of minerals for our modern world.

16:16

BEN KNIGHT: Vale is Brazil's biggest mining company and BHP's partner in the Samarco mine. The mine is one of the world's biggest exporters of iron ore pellets.

16:21

Aerial. Tailings dam

The waste from that mining, known as tailings, is dumped into massive holding dams.

16:36

In 2007, Samarco's main dam was reaching capacity so it started building a new one:

16:45

Fundão road sign

Fundão. But almost immediately, there were problems.

16:52

Fundão dam

The new dam was shut down for more than a year to make crucial repairs to its drainage system.

16:57

Sampaio 100%. Super:
JOSE LEITE SAMPAIO
Prosecutor, Federal Public Ministry

JOSE LEITE SAMPAIO, PROSECUTOR, FEDERAL PUBLIC MINISTRY: And if we look through the dam's history, we will see that there were signs that drainage continued to be a problem at all times at that dam. And as these problems were taken care of, new drainage problems appeared, so it seems to us that the water is the key point.

17:03

Public Ministry exterior

BEN KNIGHT: Jose Leite Sampaio is a prosecutor with Brazil's Public Ministry, it’s like an anti-corruption commission. And he is scathing about the entire dam project.

17:34

Sampaio 100%

JOSE LEITE SAMPAIO: There is a type of dam construction for mining waste that is the cheapest, has the lowest cost, but which has demonstrated that it is not the safest. This was the technology and structure used in the  Fundão dam.

17:45

Aerial. Samarco mine

BEN KNIGHT: Then in 2014, Samarco faced a more fundamental problem: the falling price of iron ore. The company's strategy to maintain its earnings was to massively ramp up production,

18:16

GFX:  O/Lay Samarco mine tailings in million tonnes graph

which meant much more mining waste: an extra 5 million tonnes in a single year. Its new dam, just a few years old, would have to be made even bigger - and quickly.

18:33

Pinto 100%. Super:
CARLOS EDUARDO PINTO
State Environmental Prosecutor

CARLOS EDUARDO PINTO: It was planned and quickly turned around because of the increase in production. Ramping up production leads to a race: an accelerated search for somewhere to put the tailings. And this compromises the environmental integrity of the project.

18:48

Joaquim Pimenta de Avila and Ben Knight look at aerial photographs of the  Fundão dam

BEN KNIGHT: Samarco's solution was to redesign the dam wall, making it higher and changing its course.

19:12

BEN KNIGHT (to Joaquim Pimenta de Avila) We can see that the line of the dam has changed here. It should be going straight across, but instead...

JOAQUIM PIMENTA DE AVILA, CONSULTING ENGINEER: Yes.

BEN KNIGHT: ...it's - and that's not your design?

JOAQUIM PIMENTA DE AVILA: Not my design, yes.

BEN KNIGHT: This is Joaquim Pimenta de Avila, a highly respected civil engineer

19:20

Aerial photo

and the original designer of the  Fundão dam. He says, because dams don't make money, they are often a low priority for mining companies.

19:34

De Avila 100%. Super:
JOAQUIM PIMENTA DE AVILA
Consulting engineer

JOAQUIM PIMENTA DE AVILA: I think a dam is not the place to save money in a mine. The care for the dam costs nothing. I almost say that is free, compared to the losses, big losses that the company have when the dam fails and the mine stopped operating.

19:44

de Avila and Knight look at aerial photos

BEN KNIGHT: In 2014, Samarco asked him to come back and look at cracks that had appeared in the re-designed dam. He saw what he believed was the beginning of a rupture and he advised Samarco to install devices called piezometers to monitor water levels deep in the dam.

20:09

De Avila 100%

JOAQUIM PIMENTA DE AVILA: There was no piezometers at that time when the cracks appeared. That was the reason why I recommended to put the piezometers and then to observe the piezometers daily.

20:28

Brazilian beach

BEN KNIGHT: His concern was the risk of what's called liquefaction. Tailings are essentially a mix of water, sand and other minerals.

20:41

Knight walks along beach

If you've ever walked on a beach - and I assume you have - you know that wet sand's pretty firm under foot. But when engineers talk about liquefaction, they're talking about saturated sand, to the point where there is no longer any friction holding the grains of sand together. And so what happens is, the whole structure just washes away.

20:56

De Avila interview

Samarco says it followed all of Joaquim Pimenta de Avila's recommendations. But in a sworn statement to Brazil's federal police, he says that, when he tried to check on progress at the dam, he couldn't get a straight answer from the company.

21:20

(To Joaquim Pimenta de Avila) Is it your view that if your recommendations had been followed back then, that this may not have happened?

21:35

De Avila 100%. Super:
JOAQUIM PIMENTA DE AVILA
Consulting engineer

[interview continues]

JOAQUIM PIMENTA DE AVILA: If the observations show that the water level is rising, they have to drill wells and pumping out to lower the water level to 20 metres below that. With that condition, I am convinced that you would not have liquefaction there.

BEN KNIGHT: And not the catastrophic collapse that happened in November?

JOAQUIM PIMENTA DE AVILA: Of course. Of course.

BEN KNIGHT: It could have been prevented?

JOAQUIM PIMENTA DE AVILA: Yes.

21:41

Mine.

Music

22:08

GFX o/lay: bhpbilliton/samarco

BEN KNIGHT: As the co-owner of the mine, BHP had two of its executives on the Samarco board:

22:11

GFX o/lay: photo of Wilson. Jimmy Wilson, President, Iron Ore

including Jimmy Wilson, BHP's global head of iron ore operations.

22:18

Mackenzie interview

(To Andrew Mackenzie) So the BHP executives who are on the Samarco board never expressed concern that there were ongoing problems with the dam?

22:25

Mackenzie 100%. Super:
ANDREW MACKENZIE
CEO, BHP Billiton

ANDREW MACKENZIE: I've only been CEO for two-and-a-half years during that dam. We're obviously doing an investigation of all of the communications that happened during the course of the dam. But what I would say to you is that, until that time, Samarco was seen as a company that was very keen to embrace the highest standards in the world. They were very keen to adopt BHP Billiton standards. What we need to understand is: you know, how did that all work in practice?

22:34

Aerial. Aftermath of dam collapse

Music

23:04

BEN KNIGHT: Investigators are looking at exactly that. For example, Samarco's lack of an effective emergency plan, as it was required to have under the dam's licence. On the day the dam collapsed, Samarco's response was to try to call people in Bento Rodrigues on the phone.

23:07

Sampaio 100%. Super:
JOSE LEITE SAMPAIO
Prosecutor, Federal Public Ministry

JOSLEITE SAMPAIO: Everything that was done was improvised. To pick up the phone in a situation like this to warn 600 people? The emergency situation plan done by companies in Brazil is only done as a formality. It's not to face a real emergency situation.

23:29

Aerial. Aftermath of dam collapse

Music

23:50

BEN KNIGHT: With no warning, people in Bento only had time to escape with the clothes on their backs.

23:53

Paula Alves
Super: PAULA ALVES

PAULA ALVES : They could have prevented it and also warned us. They should have told us. We could have saved a document, a photo, a keepsake.

24:00

Marinalva. Super:
MARINALVA SALGADO

MARINALVA SALGADO : My husband's diary he left for me; and the shirt that he died in. Those I know I will never be able to recover. Because the other things you can replace, but those things you can't.

24:14

Barra Longa

BEN KNIGHT: What's even harder to comprehend is why there was no warning at all given to the riverside town of Barra Longa, about 50 kilometres downstream.

24:30

Mud being cleared from shops, residents and streets of Barra Longa

The mud arrived here in the dead of night, a full 10 hours after the dam burst.

24:43

Iris 100%. Super:
IRIS FERREIRA LANA

IRIS FERREIRA LANA : The police reassured us that we didn't have to worry and that we were not at risk.

24:55

River through Barra Longa

BEN KNIGHT: Rumours of the dam break had filtered through, but residents were told to relax.

25:01

Antonio 100%. Super:
ANTONIO LUIS

ANTONIO LUIS : I thought, "I'm going to ring Samarco to check what's happening." And Samarco guaranteed that there wouldn't be any mud here.

25:12

Knight walks with Antonio Luis

I had a vegetable garden over there, which produced vegetables for my restaurant.

BEN KNIGHT:  Antonio Luis had nine guests that night

25:18

Photos.  Antonio’s hotel

at his hotel and restaurant, in a prime position right on the river, near the main town square.

25:29

Music

25:35

Knight and Antonio on street outside hotel site

ANTONIO LUIS : All of a sudden, everything was gone. This is all that was left.

25:46

BEN KNIGHT: The mud swept corpses, body parts, dead animals and other debris through the town.

25:55

Romulo demonstrates using front door as a barricade

Romulo Almeida frantically tried to barricade his home against the mud, but there was no stopping it.

26:01

ROMULO ALMEIDA : When it got here, I took the door and put it in this position, locked it like this, to stop the mud going inside through here. Most of it came through the pipes, the waste system, into the bathroom, and filled the house up.

26:09

Knight and Iris by river

Iris Ferreira Lana had to be rescued from her roof by neighbours in a canoe. She's worried that the erosion of the river bank has left her house in danger of collapse.

26:41

Iris 100%

IRIS FERREIRA LANA : I don't want to go back to my house. I'm very scared. My neighbours don't want to go back either. They want resettlement as well, but the company doesn't want to do it.

26:53

Mackenzie interview

BEN KNIGHT (to Andrew Mackenzie): You have a situation where, when the dam burst, there really wasn't an emergency plan. People were called on the phone. A town where it took 10 hours for the mud to arrive did not receive any official warning. Now, those can't be BHP standards?

27:03

Mackenzie 100%. Super:
ANDREW MACKENZIE
CEO, BHP Billiton

ANDREW MACKENZIE: We, um, ah, well, we have a number of dams around the world and different standards are applied to warn the town. They always have to be agreed with the local authorities.

27:17

BEN KNIGHT: Have you considered what would've happened if this dam had burst at two o'clock in the morning instead of 3:30 in the afternoon?

27:28

ANDREW MACKENZIE: Of course I have. And of course we don't, we don't know precisely what that would've happened. I'm, I'm well aware - obviously, because we talk about these things - that discussions did happen with the authorities over what the right system was. This is often not something that's entirely within the controls of the companies.

27:35

Samarco contractors undertaking repair work

BEN KNIGHT: Samarco contractors here are repairing houses, clearing roads and fixing bridges. And just as they are upriver, they're paying victims the minimum wage and renting them temporary accommodation. But that's a far as it goes; sometimes, not even that far.

27:56

Jose on verandah overlooking river

Jose Ferreira Lana is still living in his house - but it's not by choice.

28:20

Jose and Knight inside house with interpreter. Knight to camera

BEN KNIGHT: So what he's telling us is that the company, Samarco, have said, "Look, the upstairs of your house is OK. You and your family can live up there." But what he wants to know is, how can it be safe to live up there when the downstairs part of his house is basically being held up by sticks? Which is a pretty fair question.

28:30

Props holding up house

You can feel the house shake every time a car drives past.

28:48

Jose lost 12 cows and all his milking machinery, worth thousands of dollars. As yet, no-one's talked to people like Jose or Romulo about compensation.

28:55

Romulo 100%. Super:
ROMULO ALMEIDA

ROMULO ALMEIDA : I ended up with nothing but the clothes I had on. I lost everything I had at home: documents, photos of my children. Even to receive part of the compensation in advance to survive has been very difficult.

29:08

Samarco contractors undertaking repair work

BEN KNIGHT: For all BHP's promises to do the right thing, its presence in Brazil is still negligible. It's now built up to 30 people, but in reality, the day-to-day task of dealing with the victims falls to Samarco.

29:22

Mackenzie interview

(To Andrew Mackenzie) Are you confident that Samarco is the right company to be handling the recovery?

29:43

Mackenzie 100%. Super:
ANDREW MACKENZIE
CEO, BHP Billiton

ANDREW MACKENZIE: I'm confident that they are the right company to be handling the recovery. And I think, you know, although there, I'm sure there are things that have not been perfect, many of the progress that has happened on the ground and the trust that seems still to be shown by large members of the community to Samarco, reassure me that.

29:49

Knight on street with Antonio Luis outside restaurant

BEN KNIGHT: But that's not what we found on the ground. People like Antonio Luis are frustrated.

30:06

ANTONIO LUIS : When you go to Samarco to ask something, they leave you there waiting for an answer. Ten people will go past you, look in your eyes, intimidate you and go.

30:13

BEN KNIGHT: He's been out of business for months, living on the minimum wage. Samarco is fitting out a new building so he can re-open his restaurant. But they can't tell him when it will be ready - and he gets no say in what goes into it.

30:26

ANTONIO LUIS : It's creating a dependency, making us ask for things. In other words, I say that they are reducing us to slavery; those who were independent.

30:40

Knight to camera outside Samarco

BEN KNIGHT: Well, ever since the dam burst, the pressure has been building on Samarco and particularly its chief executive, Ricardo Vescovi, to answer questions about what happened here. We wanted an interview too, but shortly after we landed we got the news that he and his director of operations had been named in a federal indictment that could lead to criminal charges.

30:55

Knight and translator into Samarco control room and look at alarm panel

Days later, out of the blue, we're invited to film the new monitoring centre the company has set up to watch the dams and warn of any fresh danger.

31:15

We're shown the new alarm system that's been set up since the dam collapse.

31:32

BEN KNIGHT (to employee) So these are all the communities? You've got Bento Rodrigues, Paracatu, which was pretty much wiped out. And of course, down the bottom here...

31:36

SAMARCO EMPLOYEE: Barra Longa.

BEN KNIGHT: Barra Longa.

31:45

But the briefing ends when I start asking questions.

(To employee) So what actually happens when one of the buttons gets pushed?

SAMARCO EMPLOYEE 2: No, no, no.

BEN KNIGHT: But it's the same question. It's the same question.

SAMARCO EMPLOYEE 2 : He won't give an interview.

31:48

Knight and translator in car park with Samarco employee

BEN KNIGHT (to employee 2): We've been requesting an interview with...

Back in the mine's car park, we make one more effort to get an interview with a Samarco official,

32:00

Samarco employees board van and drive off

but without success.

32:06

Knight to camera in car park

BEN KNIGHT: Well, that obviously didn't go the way that we would have liked it to, and nor did the tour, frankly. There are a lot of questions that we have to ask about Samarco. And I think we have to accept the fact that we're going to leave the country without having any of them answered in person.

32:14

Aerials. River

Music

32:31

BEN KNIGHT:  Last week, Brazilian police asked for a court order to arrest six Samarco managers,

32:35

GFX o/lay: Ricardo Vescovi

including chief executive Ricardo Vescovi. They face charges of qualified homicide and crimes against the environment.

32:41

Aerial. Mine/dam site

Police allege the dam's collapse was not an accident but a crime: caused by too much water in the dam; the failure to monitor it properly or to install enough equipment to do so, and the speed at which the height of the dam wall was being raised to increase its capacity.

32:49

Mackenzie interview

(To Andrew Mackenzie) What you have is an emerging picture where you have prosecutors who are saying there were ongoing problems from the very beginning of the construction of this dam, with drainage. You have reports that there were warnings that were either missed or ignored, that there were requirements in the licensing that were simply not met. Now, is that not negligence?

33:11

Mackenzie 100%. Super:
ANDREW MACKENZIE
CEO, BHP Billiton

ANDREW MACKENZIE: Again, you know, I've heard of all of those reports, but they're one-off claims, and they need to be brought together, against a broad background, using experts. We've brought...

BEN KNIGHT: Well, they're out there. They've been made.

33:31

These are claims that have been made by prosecutors who've produced documentary evidence. You have the man who designed the original dam saying that he made recommendations. He can't even tell if they were followed.

33:46

ANDREW MACKENZIE: Yes.

BEN KNIGHT: Is that not negligence?

ANDREW MACKENZIE:  I've heard all of those things, you know. But these are the, these are the, these are the assertions - if I could put it that way - and I'm not trying to downplay them.

33:58

[interview continues]

I don't want to engage in the speculation of individual things. But I do want the truth to come out. And I'd rather use all the experts, take as an impartial a view as possible to get the truth out, and then act, rather than respond to individual comments.

34:08

Town GV

BEN KNIGHT: But it's the individual cases that say so much about this disaster.

34:24

Priscila walks with sons

Like Priscila Barros, whose story of tragedy didn't end with the death of her niece in the mudslide.

34:31

Priscila and Weslei

On the day the dam burst she was 32 weeks pregnant.

34:38

Priscila 100%. Super:
PRISCILA BARROS

PRISCILA BARROS : The only pain I felt inside was when I was losing my baby, when I felt my baby coming out. (Crying) That was the only pain. I didn't even imagine that I was hurt. I didn't imagine anything. I didn't feel any other pain, except for that one.

34:43

Priscila with children

Samarco has offered payments of Brazilian R$100,000 to families who lost loved ones in the disaster.

35:01

That's just over $35,000 Australian.

35:10

Priscila and Weslei

It's not much for a life. But Priscila and Weslei were refused compensation for the unborn baby they lost.

35:14

Priscila 100%

PRISCILA BARROS (crying) : They say my child is not considered as being born alive. It was alive; it was just not born yet. This hurts a lot.

35:22

Mackenzie interview

BEN KNIGHT (to Andrew Mackenzie): How does that adhere with BHP values?

ANDREW MACKENZIE: Well, if you'd like to give me a bit more details, I'm more than happy to push that into the team

35:34

in Brazil...

BEN KNIGHT: But this is the crux of it, though, isn't it? This is the company that is on the ground, that is handling the recovery for BHP. You've essentially delegated that and you don't really know how it is that they're dealing with people - and you end up with situations like that?

35:41

Mackenzie 100%. Super:
ANDREW MACKENZIE
CEO, BHP Billiton

ANDREW MACKENZIE: I think we do know, and, you know, as I, as I say, the... maybe not in quite the detail that you're describing there, but I could check with the people on our ground if they've, if, if they've heard about this, but...

BEN KNIGHT: But there are many cases...

ANDREW MACKENZIE: ... but, but, Samarco...

BEN KNIGHT: It's not just the

35:54

compensation there: it's about the people who have lost their businesses, who have had nothing more than the minimum wage since then...

ANDREW MACKENZIE: So but...

BEN KNIGHT: How are Samarco the right company - having caused this disaster - to be the ones taking care of it?

36:07

[interview continues]

ANDREW MACKENZIE: But, but Samarco -  it's not just about Samarco - it's about a whole range of other people. We're…

BEN KNIGHT: But they are the ones who are in charge of the recovery on the ground.

ANDREW MACKENZIE: They are, with a lot of support from us and a lot of encouragement from the authorities. But let's look at the problem. It's a very complex problem.

36:19

Brazil. Government GVs

Music

36:36

BEN KNIGHT: In the weeks after the disaster, Brazil's government, struggling with the end of the mining boom and running an economy in recession, filed a $7 billion lawsuit against Samarco, Vale and BHP to cover the cost of the damage.

36:38

Marilene Ramos 100%. Super:
MARILENE RAMOS
President, IBAMA

MARILENE RAMOS: Samarco will be responsible for financing this plan. And BHP and Vale will provide guarantees.

36:55

BEN KNIGHT: So what you're saying is that, if and when this deal is done, the two parent companies - Vale and BHP - will have to guarantee

37:09

that the money will be there?

MARILENE RAMOS: Yes, but over a 10 year period. It wouldn't be immediately.

37:19

Aerials. Collapsed tailings dam

BEN KNIGHT: It couldn't have come at a worse time for BHP. Hit hard by the fall in prices for its staple products like oil and iron ore, last week the company posted a half-yearly loss of almost $8 billion dollars and slashed its dividend.

37:34

Mackenzie 100%. Super:
ANDREW MACKENZIE
CEO, BHP Billiton

ANDREW MACKENZIE: Well, of course it will affect our bottom line. But I believe this company is strong, and it is, even in these difficult financial situations, you know, we are generating free cash flow. And so in my judgement this is something that this company can handle, even in these low prices, and we can continue to be a very strong company.

37:59

Damaged houses in Bento Rodrigues

BEN KNIGHT: There could be years of lawsuits and class actions ahead.

38:22

River

Then there's the scale of the environmental disaster, which will take years to properly assess.

38:32

Marilene Ramos 100%

MARILENE RAMOS: We'll have to wait for a long period of monitoring to have an idea of the exact dimension of the damage.

38:40

Rio Doce, red-brown with silt, outside Barra Longa

BEN KNIGHT: Which seems pretty obvious on the ground in places like Barra Longa.

38:50

Knight to camera by Rio Doce

You can tell just from the colour how full of silt and sediment this river still is. So, not surprisingly, people around here were wondering: what's in it? Well, Brazil's national water authority has given it the all-clear. It says that the water is drinkable if it's treated and that the levels of toxins in it are no higher than they are in other waterways near here that haven't been affected by the spill. But people around here know that this is an old mining area, and that metals like mercury and others have been in the sediment under the river bed for a long time. And they're worried that the mud has stirred all of that up and that those toxins are back in the river system once again.

38:57

Vivian da Silva Santos in lab with colleagues

Professor Vivian da Silva Santos is a toxicologist at the University of Brasilia. She is part of a group of independent researchers who are testing the river water for heavy metals.

39:36

Knight interviews Vivian da Silva in lab

VIVIAN DA SILVA SANTOS, PROF., TOXICOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF BRASILIA: From water, we found iron and manganese, lead and arsenic in higher concentrations than we have.

BEN KNIGHT: Lead and arsenic?

VIVIAN DA SILVA SANTOS: Yes.

BEN KNIGHT: And how much higher than Brazilian standards?

VIVIAN DA SILVA SANTOS: Depends on the point. In some points of the Doce River we found, tenfold or twenty-fold higher than Brazilian laws permitted.

39:49

Super:
PROF. VIVIAN DA SILVA SANTOS
Toxicology, University of Brasilia

The population uses this water, so they are drinking this water. They are treated, but no - I don't know if this treatment is sufficient to mitigate all these metals. We have to be- to concern about that because these metals in higher- in high concentrations, they can lead to  problems in long-term exposures.

40:21

Mackenzie 100%. Super:
ANDREW MACKENZIE
CEO, BHP Billiton

ANDREW MACKENZIE: This was not a pristine river system before this accident happened. And that's not in any way to try and excuse our duty. But it's just trying to determine the baseline that we would say is reasonable for us to recover against.

40:49

Samarco mine

BEN KNIGHT: There's enormous pressure to get the mine open again. If that doesn't happen, BHP and Vale will have to carry the full cost of the recovery, possibly adding billions to their liability. But those affected by the disaster also want the mine back up and running:

41:03

Sebastiao at home with family

like Sebastiao Barros. He's a Samarco employee and he was working near the dam wall on the day that it burst and nearly killed his grandson Kayque.

41:24

Sebastiao 100%

SEBASTIAO BARROS : If it stops, more than 20,000 jobs will be lost in our region. Everything revolves around it, around the mine.

41:37

Mackenzie 100%. Super:
ANDREW MACKENZIE
CEO, BHP Billiton

ANDREW MACKENZIE: From a humanitarian standpoint, having the mine working, employing all these people who then of course have lots of other employment that's created as a result of that, is an important consideration. But I don't want that mine to re-open until we know it's safe; until we have a way of dealing with the tailings that are acceptable to a wide group of people; until we've learned all the lessons and we understand cause.

41:48

Mass in Mariana church

[singing]

42:10

BEN KNIGHT: As in many villages, life in Bento Rodrigues also revolved around the church.

42:19

Father Armando conducts mass

Father Armando Godinho now celebrates mass with his fellow refugees in the city of Mariana, a chance for his scattered congregation to reunite and remember. Months after the disaster, the grief is still very close to the surface.

42:27

ARMANDO GODINHO, FR. : That is our land, our little piece of earth.

42:44

BEN KNIGHT: Samarco and its owners have promised to build the people of Bento a new village. But beyond that, very little is clear: like what else the company, or its owners BHP and Vale, might offer.

42:51

Father Armando warns his congregation not to jump at the first offer the companies make.

43:05

ARMANDO GODINHO : They can come to you and say, like this: "You want 100,000? You want 500,000?" You might say, "Oh yeah, that's good. I want it. Five hundred thousand? Great. That pays for what I lost there." But will it pay? Until when? How long will that money last you? So that's what we need, my brothers: to continue with that strength in the fight.

43:12

Congregation outside church

43:39

BEN KNIGHT: They will need all the strength they can muster, because their fight is with politicians who rely on mining money to finance their campaigns, with Samarco, the company they deal with every day, and which they rely on for everything from the roof over their heads to the food on their tables, and with two of the biggest mining companies in the world: Vale and BHP Billiton.

43:43

Priscila 100%

PRISCILA BARROS : I will fight for my rights. They shouldn't think they can come and shut me up. They will not.

44:08

Last frame of vision

44:21