Jan. 12: Cars sit in debris in a flooded street in
Teresopolis, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil.
TERESOPOLIS, BRAZIL – Rain began falling again
Friday in this mountain town, hampering rescue
efforts in the wake of deadly mudslides and
flooding that has killed hundreds of people and
left vast swaths of cities buried under layers of
earth.
The death toll ticked up overnight to 479 killed in
three cities north of Rio in what is one of Brazil's
deadliest natural disasters on record. Officials
feared, however, that number could sharply rise,
though they would not venture a guess of how
many remain missing. Local reports put it in the
hundreds.
Hundreds of rescuers were in the area and
officials said lack of help was not a problem --
rather it was trying to access remote areas
isolated after roads were washed out. Despite the
new rains, no more mudslides have been
reported.
For those who did survive remains the grim task
of burying loved ones.
As night fell Thursday on Teresopolis, barefoot
volunteers dragged a generator and stadium
lights into a cemetery, where nearly 200 freshly
dug graves lay open like wounds in the red clay
soil, waiting for the dead.
Funerals already had been held all day: a sister
laying her brother to rest, a man burying his 1-
year-old niece in a small white casket, a mother
who cried her 9-year-old son's name repeatedly
as he was lowered into the earth.
Small, handmade white crosses identified only by
numbers -- the details would have to come later
-- dotted the desolate, sodden hilltop.
Dozens more funerals will come Friday and 300
more graves will be dug Saturday, said Vitor da
Costa Soares, a city worker in charge of the
cemetery.
"We'll make room. We have to. We'll stay up
here until 10 p.m., midnight if we can, and we'll
be here at 6 a.m. tomorrow," he said.
Heavy rains unleashed the mudslides before
dawn Wednesday, burying people as they slept
in this area about 40 miles north of Rio.
Survivors started digging for friends and relatives
with their bare hands, kitchen utensils, whatever
they could find as they waited for help in remote
neighborhoods perched precariously on steep,
washed-out hillsides.
In the remote Campo Grande neighborhood of
Teresopolis, now accessible only by a perilous
five-mile hike through mud-slicked jungle, family
members pulled the lifeless bodies of loved ones
from the muck. They carefully laid the corpses on
dry ground, covering them with blankets.
A young boy cried out as his father's body was
found: "I want to see my dad! I want to see my
dad!"
Flooding and mudslides are common in Brazil
when the summer rains come, but this week's
slides were among the worst in recent memory.
The disasters punish the poor, who often live in
rickety shacks perched perilously on steep
hillsides with little or no foundations. But even the
rich did not escape the damage in Teresopolis,
where large homes were washed away.
"I have friends still lost in all of this mud," said
Carlos Eurico, a resident of Campo Grande, as he
motioned to a sea of destruction behind him. "It's
all gone. It's all over now. We're putting
ourselves in the hands of God."
In the same area, Nilson Martins, 35, carefully
held the only thing pulled out alive since dawn: a
pet rabbit that had somehow remained pristinely
white despite the mud.
"We're just digging around, there is no way of
knowing where to look," he said. "There are three
more bodies under the rubble over there. One
seems to be a girl, no more than 16, dead, buried
under that mud."
The hundreds of homes washed away in the
neighborhood were turned inside out, their
plumbing and electrical wires exposed. Children's
clothes littered the earth, cars were tossed upside
down into thickets. An eerie quiet prevailed as
people searched for life. The sounds of digging,
with sticks and hands, were occasionally
punctuated by shouts as another corpse was
located.
Conceicao Salomao, a doctor coordinating relief
efforts at a makeshift refuge inside a gymnasium
in central Teresopolis, said about 750 people
were staying there Thursday and about 1,000
people had sought treatment in the past day. One
danger she worried about was leptospirosis, a
waterborne bacterial disease.
"The hospitals around here are overflowing. The
army and navy are setting up field hospitals to
help," she said.
Rio state's Civil Defense department said on its
website that 222 people were killed in Teresopolis,
216 in nearby Nova Friburgo and 41 in
neighboring Petropolis. It said about 14,000
people had been driven from their homes.
An additional 37 people had died in floods and
mudslides since Christmas in other parts of
southeastern Brazil -- 16 in Minas Gerais state
north of Rio and 21 in Sao Paulo state.
Nineteen-year-old Geisa Carvalho and her mother
were awakened at 3 a.m. Wednesday by a
tremendous rumble as tons of muck slid down a
sheer granite rock face onto their Teresopolis
neighborhood of Caleme.
The power was out, but by lightning flashes they
could see the torrent of mud and water rushing
just a few feet (meters) from their home -- and
the remnants of their neighbors' houses that
were swept far down a hill.
"We were like zombies, covered in mud, in the
dark, digging and digging," Carvalho said.
Nearly all the homes in their neighborhood were
swept to the bottom of a hill.
Just a few rescuers managed to hike to Caleme
on Thursday and they had only shovels and
machetes -- not the heavier equipment needed to
hunt for survivors. Residents said they had no
food, water or medication, and many made the
long walk for help to the center of Teresopolis.
Morgues in the cities were full and bodies covered
in blankets were laid in streets.
Officials said the area hit by slides had seen 10
inches of rain in less than 24 hours. More rain is
forecast through the weekend.
Source: Http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/01/12/torrential-rain-floods-rio-leave-dead/?test=latestnews
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