Found a news story that got buried in Brazil about a mining dam crack

I was scrolling through some Portuguese forums and saw that a local paper in Minas Gerais reported a crack in a Vale dam back in January 2019, but the piece got pulled down within hours. Two days later the dam collapsed and killed 270 people. Has anyone else seen evidence of other news getting smothered in big industrial disasters?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_william1d ago

The Vale dam thing still bugs me. I worked in a small factory near a chemical plant in Ohio where a 2016 EPA report warned about a tank leak risk but the local paper never ran it. Six months later we had a minor release that sent five guys to the hospital, and the company blamed operator error. I started checking public records after that, and it's scary how often early warnings just disappear.

taylor_flores23h ago

Oh so we're just supposed to trust that companies will TOTALLY be honest when they have a disaster coming? Yeah that's never backfired before. The fact that they yanked that article and then 270 people died is honestly one of the most depressing things I've read in a while. It's like they think if nobody reports the crack then the crack just doesn't exist. Real "out of sight out of mind" logic but with human lives on the line. I bet the local paper got a very generous "advertising budget" increase right after that article disappeared. At this point I'm surprised they don't just pay internet trolls to scrub their names from Google results too.

tessa39421h ago

they think if nobody reports the crack then the crack just doesn't exist" - that's exactly it @taylor_flores, and it's terrifying how normal this has become. Companies just pay to bury bad news and hope nobody notices until it's too late. We're basically living in a world where PR spin matters more than actual safety.