Priscila Barros survived Brazil's worst ever environmental disaster, but lost everything. Now she and other victims are beginning the biggest group action in English legal history against mining multinational BHP
“I heard a noise like a thousand thunderstorms,” she says, her grey-blue eyes flooding with tears as she recounts what happened next, with the help of an interpreter. “Then, I saw the mud coming towards me. A mountain of it.” A separate trial against Samarco’s second parent company, Brazilian mining company Vale, is taking place in the Netherlands, with about 70,000 plaintiffs.The day of the disaster, 5 November, 2015, was Priscila’s 28th birthday. She remembers: “I was sitting on my couch while Kayque slept. I was due to go for an ultrasound scan the next day. I heard a little knock on the door and opened it to see my niece, Manu who was five. She wanted Kayque to play with her.
Priscila was taken to a meeting point for survivors where she was reunited with Arthur and her mother. “My mother asked, ‘where is Kayque?’ I told her, ‘I’m the only one alive’.” The grief was instant. She was bleeding heavily, her clothes shredded and her body covered in wounds, scars of which are still visible today.,” she says. She was helicoptered to hospital where she stayed for a fortnight. It was some days into her stay that a nurse told her a child had been rescued. It was Kayque.