In the early hours of December 19, 1938, Martins was travelling with a group of Scouts from Belo Horizonte to São Paulo, when their passenger train collided head-on with a freight train near the city of Barbacena, resulting in many injuries and approximately 40 deaths.
He emigrated to South America in 1938, and stayed there until 1945, for most of the time in Barbacena, Brazil, where he tried his hand at managing a farm.
From 1950 to 1956, he was a "specialized geologist" at the Division of Geology and Mineralogy, which evolved from the old Geological Survey of Brazil, and mapped the regions of São João del Rei, Juiz de Fora, and Barbacena, a whole complex metasedimentary southern region of Minas Gerais.