Ten people have been killed after part of a cliff collapsed onto leisure boats on leisure boats in Furnas Lake, injuring at least 32 people.
The collapse at 11:00 local time (14:00 GMT) followed days of rain in Minas Gerais state, which had made the cliffs more susceptible to collapse, local fire officials told reporters.
Dramatic videos of Saturday’s accident showed tourists shouting as a column of rock came crashing down, smashing several leisure boats and sending a huge wave over the lake.
“I called local hospitals. So far I haven’t had any information about them. We are distressed, very concerned. We get nervous because we have no information and it’s family, right? Family is everything to us.” said Alessandra Barbosa told news outlet EPTV.
The bodies were taken to Passos city, where coroners worked to identify them. The work was difficult because of the ″high energy impact″ of the rock on the boaters, said a regional civil police official, Marcos Pimenta. The victims were all Brazilian nationals, aged between 14 and 68, according to preliminary investigations.
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”.
Furnas Lake, which was created in 1958 for the installation of a hydroelectric plant, is a popular tourist attraction in the area roughly 420km north of São Paulo.
