  The Brumadinho dam disaster occurred on the 25 January, 2019 when Dam I, an
upstream tailings dam at the Corrego do Feijao iron ore mine, 9 kilometres (5.6
mi) east of Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, Brazil, suffered a catastrophic failure.
Over 248 people died and over 2.88 billion worth of property were lost or
damaged due to the subsequent mud flow and flooding. This is merely 4 years
after the previous Mariana dam break affecting over 1 million people downstream
due to iron ore mining waste flowing downstream into river basin. To prevent a
similar tragedy from reoccurring, it's useful to examine the cause of the
Brumadinho dam break and compare observations with model simulations. HEC RAS,
developed by US Army Corps of Engineers, is used to model the mud flow from the
Brumadinho dam break based on the NASA SRTM elevation dataset over Brazil. The
extent of the mud flow from the HEC RAS simulation matches the actual flooding
due to the dam break. This simulation technique can later be used for future
dam collapse predictions.
