The death toll from a cliff boulder that collapsed onto leisure boats on a Brazilian lake has grown to ten, according to authorities. Authorities worked to identify the deceased, as divers searched the lake for any other victims.
Following the accident in Minas Gerais state on Saturday, police chief Marcos Pimenta said it was possible that some persons were missing. At least 32 individuals were hurt, but by Saturday evening, the majority of them had been released from hospitals.
The catastrophe happened between the cities of Sao Jose da Barra and Capitolio, where the boats had left from. A group of tiny boats was cruising slowly near the sheer rock face on Furnas Lake when a fracture opened in the rock and a large piece crashed onto many of the vessels, according to video footage.
Coroners sought to identify the dead after they were transported to Passos city. The work was challenging because of the ′′high energy impact′′ of the boulder on the boaters, according to Marcos Pimenta, a regional civil police official. Jlio Borges Antunes, 68, had been recognized as one of the victims, he said.
Furnas Lake, which was formed in 1958 for the construction of a hydroelectric plant, is a renowned tourist attraction in the area north of Sao Paulo, around 420 kilometers (260 miles).
Officials speculated that the loosening of the wall was caused by recent torrential rains in the state, which caused flooding and forced over 17,000 people from their homes.
Tiago Antonelli, the head of the Brazilian Geological Service’s Applied Geology Division, said the cliff wall has been subjected to millennia of erosion and is vulnerable to rain, heat, and cold.
“It’s normal to happen in many canyons, even with rocks of that size. But nowadays, with the intensification of tourism, people are starting to get closer to these places and to register these phenomena with their cell phones,” Antonelli said.
Authorities should have been controlling the site, according to Joana Fontez, a geology professor at the Federal University of Goiás, to prevent accidents, especially during the rainy season. She claimed that the boats should have been maintained at least one kilometer (0.6 miles) away from the waterfall where the accident occurred.
