At least seven people were killed and three were missing after a cliff collapsed onto boats carrying tourists on a lake in Brazil, authorities said on Saturday.
Rescue teams, including a dive squad and members of the Brazilian Navy, rushed to Furnas Lake in Minas Gerais state, where panicked tourists had watched helplessly as a large rock fragment broke off a ravine and plunged atop three boats.
The navy said it would investigate the causes of the accident.
Photo: Reuters via Fire Brigade of Minas Gerais / Handout
The latest official toll is “seven dead and three missing,” Minas Gerais firefighters’ spokesman Pedro Aihara said on Saturday night.
Another 32 were wounded, including nine who had to be hospitalized, authorities said.
Firefighters had initially reported 20 missing, but “that number was substantially reduced because a good part of the victims who were unaccounted for were people who moved by their own means to hospitals,” Aihara said in a voice message sent to reporters.
Tourists flock to see the rock walls, caverns and waterfalls that surround the green waters of Lake Furnas, formed by the hydroelectric dam of the same name.
Dramatic videos shared on social networks caught the exact moment when the cliff fell on the three boats. Another video posted on social media shows the minute before the fall, in which several people warn that “lots of stones are falling” and yell at the occupants of the other boats to move away from the wall.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro retweeted some of these videos on his account, and said that “as soon as the unfortunate disaster occurred, the Brazilian Navy moved to the site to rescue victims and transport the injured.”
The divers’ search was to be interrupted overnight for safety reasons and resumed in the morning, but other rescuers continue to work at the site.
Very heavy rain has fallen in recent days in southeastern Brazil, making the collapse more likely, firefighters said.
Earlier last year, the concern was a lack of rain as Brazil experienced the worst drought in 91 years, which forced officials to alert the water flow from the Furnas Lake dam.
Even in the dry season, in some parts of the lake the movement is so intense that the boats have to take turns to navigate on the lake, the Capitolio City Hall press office said.
The press office of Minas Gerais state told The Associated Press that the fire department had deployed divers and helicopters to help.
Minas Gerais Governor Romeu Zema sent messages of solidarity with the victims via social media.
Furnas Lake, which was created in 1958 for the installation of a hydroelectric plant, is a popular tourist draw in the area about 420km north of Sao Paulo.
Officials in Capitolio, which has about 8,400 residents, have said the town can see about 5,000 visitors on a weekend and up to 30,000 on holidays.
Additional reporting by AP
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