Floods and landslides triggered by torrential rains have now killed at least 100 people in northeastern Brazil, officials said on Tuesday as emergency workers searched for bodies and survivors.
The force of the landslide destroyed homes in the neighbourhood, including Jardim Monteverde, a poor community outside the city of Recife. Locals have compared the roaring wave of mud to a tsunami.
At least 24 municipalities in Pernambuco state have declared a state of emergency and more than 6,000 people have lost their homes or been forced to flee. The state is the scene of the latest in a series of deadly weather disasters that have hit the country in recent months.
Rescue teams found dozens of bodies buried after floodwaters engulfed the neighborhood on Saturday, and said they hoped to find more. Pernambuco disaster management officials said at least 14 people were missing. The crew are using dogs trained to sniff people and planes to locate the missing.
President Jair Bolsonaro posted a video on Twitter on Monday that showed him flying in a helicopter over the disaster area, where brown floodwaters inundated large areas and eroded mud-stained hills. They were hit where the house once stood.
“I tried to land, but the pilots recommended that, given the instability of the soil, we could have an accident. So we decided against it,” the far-right president said at a news conference.
He recalled a series of devastating floods in Brazil that have killed hundreds in recent months, and which experts say are exacerbated by climate change. The rain started last week but intensified over the weekend. On the night of Friday through Saturday, the rainfall in parts of Pernambuco was 70 percent of the normal rainfall for the entire month of May.
“We’ve never seen so much rain in such a short time,” said 60-year-old retired Mario Guadalupe. “I saw landslides happen. The first part of the hill gave way, then it was just a mud tsunami. It almost took away my house. ,
Meteorological tragedies are becoming a familiar script in Brazil. They are hardest hit in poor neighborhoods, especially mountainous areas, or slums.
“Climate change may be responsible for the increase in extreme, violent rainfall, which is being found not only in Brazil but around the world,” said Jose Marengo, research coordinator at the National Center for Natural Disaster Monitoring and Alerts. AFP,
In February, 233 people were killed in floods and landslides in the southeastern city of Petropolis in the state of Rio de Janeiro. In January, torrential rains killed at least 28 people in southeastern Brazil, mostly in the state of So Paulo.
Bolsonaro drew criticism for dismissing it, saying that “unfortunately these tragedies do have their share of problems in a country the size of a continent.”
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