Workers from Ecuador's state-owned oil company Petroecuador are cleaning the Caple River in Esmeraldas after a dam, which was helping to contain some of the 25,000 barrels of oil spilled from a pipeline rupture, collapsed due to heavy rains. This has worsened the environmental emergency, contaminating rivers and Pacific beaches. "The rain was very intense, [March 25] it was too strong, the amount of water that fell in the area (...) was too much," says the country's Vice Minister of Hydrocarbons of Energy and Mines of Ecuador, Guillermo Ferreira. "Here, the river is completely dead," says a villager. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES