Grain silo explosion in Brazil leaves 8 dead, 11 injured 

At least eight people were killed and 11 others were injured on Wednesday after a grain silo exploded in southern Brazil, government authorities announced on Thursday. 

The explosion took place at C.Vale, an agricultural cooperative in the town of Palotina, about 370 miles (600 kilometers) from the state capital of Curitiba. 

“There was an explosion in one of the silos that triggered a second and a third,” Parana fire brigade spokesman Tiago Zajac told the Agence France-Presse news agency.

At least eight people died in the blast, seven of which were foreign workers from Haiti. Eleven others were injured by the explosion and were transported to local hospitals, the company said. 

At least one worker is still missing. Rescue teams and search dogs were sent to the site to look through the rubble and the grains left by the explosion, said Fire Department official Manoel Vasco. 

The cause of the explosion is still under investigation. However, the investigation cannot move forward until the missing person is located, C.Vale said in a statement.

The silo where the explosion took place stored about 12,000 metric tons of soybeans and 40,000 metric tons of corn. The grain dust particles from soybeans, corn, and other types of grain are highly combustible and are prone to create fires or explosions, particularly in confined spaces like a silo. 

The president of Parana farm cooperative group OCEPAR, Jose Ricken, said that such as explosion had not happened “in a long time,” with the last one being in 1993. 

“I’m deeply saddened by what happened at C Vale,” Brazilian Agriculture Minister Carlos Favaro wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I express my condolences to the families of the victims.”