Exhausted Brazilian rescuers faced another day of grim searching through a wall of mud yesterday as hopes fade of finding survivors, with almost 400 people now feared dead after some of the worst rains in decades.
Civil Defense officials said late on Friday that at least 219 people had been killed across Rio de Janeiro state since Monday when some of the heaviest rains in half a century unleashed floods and mudslides.
The heavy rain also forced some 50,000 people to leave their homes, officials said, either because their homes were damaged or because they were ordered to leave due to fear of fresh landslides.
PHOTO: EPA
Rescue teams have pulled out scores of bodies since part of a hillside collapsed on Wednesday, sliding onto a shantytown built on a landfill in Niteroi, across the bay from Rio de Janeiro, burying an estimated 200 people.
The floods of the past days tore through the metropolitan area’s precarious hillside slums, or favelas. Niteroi was hardest hit, with at least 132 dead, according to the civil defense authorities.
Some 150 people worked through the night searching for survivors in Niteroi’s Morro do Bumba shantytown, with the help of eight excavators, as a stream of trucks came and went loaded with debris.
“There is a possibility” of finding survivors, Niteroi Civil Defense chief, Marival Gomes said. “It’s not easy but there is hope.”
Firefighters working at the site since Wednesday however appear to be working on the assumption that there are no survivors.
They said there was little chance of finding new survivors after part of the hillside fell away and swallowed everything in its path, including 50 houses, a day-care center and a pizzeria.
A handful of people were rescued from the mud in the few hours after the landslide, but after that only bodies have appeared, according to reporters on the scene.
State Governor Sergio Cabral briefly visited Morro do Bumba late on Friday.
“We are very worried about diseases that could spread from the decomposing bodies buried under tons of dirt and garbage,” Cabral said.
Cabral said he asked the Brazilian military to help in rescue efforts. Aid will include two army field hospitals to help survivors, he said.
The federal government released US$113 million in aid for municipalities in Rio state affected by the floods and mudslides, Cabral said.
The number of people swept away remains unknown, but firefighters have estimated, based on witness testimonies, that some 200 people were buried under the rubble.
Cristiane Oliveira, 27, saved her daughters from the mudslide but lost her mother, uncles and cousins and still waited to see their bodies emerge from the piles of earth.
“I look and I think, ‘Everyone is under there.’ It’s really sad,” Oliveira said.
In Rio de Janeiro city, where 67 people have been killed, Mayor Eduardo Paes signed a decree authorizing police to force people out of homes located in dangerous areas as intermittent rain continued to fall.
“The risk of new mudslides is enormous, even if it stops raining, because the ground is extremely flooded,” said Jose Paulo Miranda de Queiroz, deputy commander of Rio’s firefighters.
Amid stormy conditions, the navy released an alert for massive waves of more than 4m expected on Rio’s beaches.
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
At first, Francis Ari Sture thought a human was trying to shove him down the steep Norwegian mountainside. Then he saw the golden eagle land. “We are staring at each other for, maybe, a whole minute,” Sture said on Monday. “I’m trying to think what’s in its mind.” The bird then attacked Sture five more times on Thursday last week, scratching and clawing the 31-year-old bicycle courier’s face and arms over 10 to 15 minutes as he sprinted down the mountain. The same eagle is believed to be responsible for attacks on three other people across a vast mountainous area of southern Norway
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for