Death toll in bridge collapse in Brazil jumps to 8, with at least 9 people still missing

SAO PAULO — Brazilian authorities said on Thursday that more bodies have been found after a bridge linking two northern states collapsed four days ago, raising the death toll to eight.

Brazil's navy said at least nine people were still missing. On Sunday, cars and trucks crossing the Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira Bridge fell into a deep river after a section of the bridge crumbled.

Police operating on the border of the northern states of Maranhao and Tocantins said eight vehicles had plunged into the river: four trucks, two cars and two motorcycles.

An investigation was underway, police and Brazil’s road department said, but the search of the river has been slow because of risks of a sulfuric acid spill from one of the trucks.

Caco Graca, a supervisor at Maranhao state's environment secretariat, told journalists on Thursday that the risk of a spill has been reduced after the cargo amounting to 76 tons of sulfuric acid and 22,000 liters of agrochemical substances, was found intact.

None of those tanks with the chemicals has been removed yet, he added.

“The worst case scenario would have been a leak of the cargo during the fall. That did not happen, the tanks are intact,” Graca told journalists.

The 533-meter (1,748-foot) -long bridge between the cities of Estreito and Aguiarnopolis was built in the 1960s. It is about 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) north of the capital, Brasilia.