Brazilians huddled in cow pens converted into emergency shelters on Friday as swollen rivers continue to rise and northern Brazil’s worst floods in decades boosted the number of homeless to nearly 300,000. The death toll rose to 39 and coffins started popping out of the soaked earth.
More than 1,000 people forced from their homes were crammed into a sprawling complex of stables and wooden shacks that hosts the annual August cattle fair in Bacabal, a city of 95,000 surrounded by small farms and jungle.
Up to six people were staying in each pen, sleeping in hammocks, mattresses and on the floor. They cooked government handouts of rice and beans over open wood fires, many with the TV sets they took with them stacked among their belongings.
Others stayed in shacks normally used to sell trinkets and cattle products during the annual fair. The pigs, chickens and dogs they brought with them roamed a concrete courtyard where children played.
Local health officials acknowledged sanitary conditions were deplorable and could lead to outbreaks of disease, but those staying in the stables said they worried conditions could be worse elsewhere if they were forced to go.
Luz Gomes said a cow pen felt like a safe temporary home for her three children, with her neighbors living in the stall next door after all were evacuated by flatbed truck as floodwaters swept through their neighborhood of wooden shacks and mud-brick houses.
“We’ve gotten used to being here, I’ve got my family by my side, we know this place and we don’t know what we’d find in another shelter,” Gomes said while cradling her baby son.
None thought about returning home anytime soon as unusually heavy rains continued on Friday, extending two months of rainfall across 10 of Brazil’s 26 states.
Three times the size of Alaska, the affected area stretches from the normally wet rainforest to coastal states known for lengthy droughts.
In Belterra, about 1,100km from Bacabal, the rains washed earth from a cemetery, dislodging four coffins that later washed up on riverbanks and sending an unknown number floating down the Tapajos River that feeds into the Amazon.
Meteorologists blame the heavy rain on an Atlantic Ocean weather system that typically moves on by April — and they forecast weeks more of the same.
Rivers still were rising in the hardest-hit state of Maranhao, where Bacabal is located.
The surging torrents wrecked bridges and made it too dangerous for relief workers to take boats onto some waterways. Mudslides were stranding trucks, preventing them from delivering food and supplies to places cut off from civilization.
“They are stuck and waiting until we can clear the roads, which for some highways could be in a week if alternative routes aren’t found,” said Abner Ferreira, civil defense spokesman for Maranhao.
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