Death toll rises above 375 in Brazil floods
TERESOPOLIS, Brazil (AFP) – Rescuers searched through layers of mud on Thursday for survivors and bodies after freakishly heavy rains caused landslides to slice through three towns near Rio de Janeiro, killing at least 378 people.
The calamity that devastated the mountain towns of Teresopolis, Petropolis and Novo Friburgo was seen as Brazil's worst natural disaster in 43 years.
President Dilma Rousseff was to fly over the zone Thursday. Her government has released 470 million dollars in initial emergency aid and sent seven tons of medical supplies.
The death toll from the area, known as the Serrana, has risen progressively as rescuers spread out into remote hamlets.
Destroyed roads and bridges meant that access in many cases was possible only with one of seven helicopters deployed to help rescue efforts. Telephones and power systems had collapsed in several locations.
The catastrophe struck before dawn Wednesday, as families were asleep in their homes.
"One woman tried to save her children but her two-month-old baby was carried away by a torrent like a doll," sobbed Angela, a 55-year-old resident of Teresopolis who saw the destruction unfold around her.
Heavy tropical rains are common at this time of year in southeastern Brazil. But they were suddenly intensified by a cold front, bringing weeks' worth of water crashing down in a matter of hours.
"In eight hours... it rained as much as for the entire month, and caused avalanches of rocks and soil that carried everything down with them, picking up houses," said Paulo Canedo, a hydrologist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
He said the disaster was made worse by houses being illegally built on slopes, weakening the surface of the hills.
That "increased the number of deaths and helped the avalanches occur, because when a house gives way it raises the mass heading downhill," he said.
Local officials in Teresopolis told AFP that 161 people died, while those in Petropolis said 36 died there.
Brazilian television said 168 people died in nearby Novo Friburgo, including three firemen engulfed by mud as they carried out a rescue. That town remained largely cut-off, accessible mainly by air.
Another 13 bodies were discovered Thursday in a village called Sumidoro.
Churches and police stations were turned into makeshift morgues, the smell of decomposing corpses heavy in the warm air.
The pervasive shadow of death transformed the soaring, lush region, which had become a tourist getaway for wealthy Rio residents drawn to its cooler temperatures and history as a vacation spot for 19th-century Brazilian nobility.
In the streets, residents helped 1,000 rescue workers search through the rubble of collapsed buildings and the mud to find bodies or survivors. As initial shock subsided, locals comforted each other and wept at the destruction wrought.
Among the despair, there were a few triumphs.
Firemen managed to save alive a six-month-old baby and the 25-year-old father who had been buried in mud in each others' arms. The father, Wellington, told the G1 news website that his wife and his mother-in-law died when mud swamped their home.
Weather forecasters said more rain was expected in the coming days, and the civil defense service urged residents in risky areas to evacuate their houses. More than 2,000 people in Teresopolis alone were homeless.
Rain fell Thursday, keeping the saturated ground slick and increasing the danger of more mudslides.
A local spokesman for the Teresopolis mayor's office said the death toll could climb further because "there are some villages we haven't yet been able to get to."
One of those was a district known as Campo Grande, where officials estimated 2,000 homes had been destroyed and up to 150 people may have been buried.
The 378 fatalities counted so far made the disaster the worst since March 1967, when mudslides killed 300 people in a town called Caraguatatuba, Brazilian media said.
By way of comparison, Brazil recorded 473 deaths for all of last year from heavy rains.
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