Recurrent accidents

In the lyrics of the song “The drunkard and the tightrope walker”, with brilliant irony and timing, João Bosco and Aldir Blanc poked at the atmosphere of the time by recalling: the evening fell like a viaduct, the viaducts are falling, the viaducts are falling!

I remembered this when, recently, a viaduct fell in Genoa, Italy, and I set out to write an article about engineering works, increasingly made at the lowest cost, increasingly with less maintenance, as if they had to be eternal. With the collapse of the viaduct on the Marginal in São Paulo, my intended article seemed to me to be stating the obvious, and I went off to deal with other subjects.

Today, with the accident at the Feijão Dam, I see that there is no way to avoid the theme. Something is very wrong. At the time of the regrettable “Mariana accident”, a distinguished fellow engineer, from my professional circles and a specialist in the field of soil mechanics, was hired by a foreign investment fund to make a diagnosis of what had happened. This fund had invested in one of the partners of the enterprise. The work was confidential and I was never able to see it, but between one social conversation and another, I learned that this colleague’s conclusion was more or less the following:

“The company president was hired because he had an MBA from I do not know where; the financial director, the same; the technical director had to do everything at minimum cost, preferably outsourcing everything, even the core activities, because the legislation was confusing and extortionate. These MBA geniuses needed to maximize profits and their bonuses to please the shareholders and secure their share, all within the law, of course! And what are the laws that govern engineering works? They are those of bureaucracy and of the ‘lowest cost of work’ (whether works, supply or design, to them it is all the same thing).

Thus, my friend, who had already been around there a lot before the accident, recalled that everyone wore a helmet (although 90% of the work was in the open air), safety belt, signaling vests, gloves, boots, glasses, one could only drive at 20 km/h and with headlights on, CREA knew that the annual fees and licenses were paid up to date, and, with everything “within the law”, everything was ok.

So we ask, the reader and I, how could these dams have fallen (collapsed), if the CREA paperwork and fees were all paid up to date, ISS, ICMS, PIS, Cofins, IR, ICM, IPI, everything up to date, workplace safety perfectly according to the manuals, cafeteria inspected by Anvisa, vacations up to date, everything contracted at the lowest cost so there would be no dirty dealing! No, it is not possible that it fell!

This “Feijão Dam” that collapsed yesterday in Brumadinho, MG (it was not even raining), again in the surroundings of Belo Horizonte, isolating the remarkable Inhotim, and whoever was there, was another “mining tailings dam”, that is, where what is not used from the mined material is accumulated forever. From what I understood, from consultations I made today with colleagues, it was raised (originally it would have been 40 m and was taken to 70 m or more, unconfirmed numbers), and was no longer receiving tailings and was being reinforced because the need had been identified. It seems that the number of victims will be a record, which will guarantee long attention from the media. Other accidents happen around the world, some without victims, and therefore with little repercussion. Certainly there will be those who dedicate themselves to discussing whether the blame was the military’s, the PSDB’s, the PT’s or the new government’s. As long as engineering is not revalued, accidents will continue to increase, and ever closer to me and to the reader.

Rio de Janeiro, published in Jornal do Brasil, on January 26, 2019.

Miguel Fernández y Fernández, engineer, chronicler and columnist, member of the National Academy of Engineering and of the Institute of Engineering # written in 2018/2019, 2,995 characters.