The city of Buriticupu, in the northeastern tip of the Brazilian Amazon, is being slowly swallowed by the earth. In the past few weeks, huge sinkholes, several meters deep, have led the municipal government to declare a state of emergency.
About 1,200 people of the 55,000 population are at risk of having their homes tip into the widening abyss.
“In the space of the last few months, the dimensions have expanded exponentially, approaching substantially closer to the residences,” an emergency decree issued by the city government earlier this month said about the sinkholes.
Photo: Reuters
Several buildings have already been destroyed, the decree said.
The recent sinkholes are an escalation of a problem that residents of Buriticupu, in Maranhao state, have been watching unfold for the past 30 years, as rains slowly erode soils made vulnerable by their sandy nature, plus a combination of poorly planned building work and deforestation.
The large soil erosions are known in Brazil as “vocoroca,” a word of indigenous origins that means “to tear the earth” and is the equivalent of sinkholes.
Photo: Reuters
The problem becomes worse in periods of heavy rain such as the current one, said Marcelino Farias, a geographer and professor at the Federal University of Maranhao.
Antonia dos Anjos, who has lived in Buriticupu for 22 years, fears more sinkholes will soon appear.
“There’s this danger right in front of us, and nobody knows where this hole has been opening up underneath,” the 65 year old said.
Buriticupu Secretary of Public Works Lucas Conceicao, an engineer, said the municipality clearly does not have the capacity to find solutions for the complex sinkhole situation.
“These problems range from the erosion processes to the removal of people who are in the risk area,” he said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
RSS