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BBC MUNDO RADIO
BRAZIL - FLOODS:Sudden floods and mudslides kill hundreds in state of Rio de Janeiro
Mudslides and floods triggered by sudden, heavy rain have swept away entire neighbourhoods in a mountainous tourist area near Rio, killing nearly 270 people, Brazilian officials said.
Brazil death toll 537 and rising
Officials refuse to guess how many people still are missing from the mudslides and flooding.
JULIANA BARBASSA Associated Press
TERESOPOLIS, Brazil — Grieving mudslide survivors carried the bodies of loved ones for hours down washed-out mountainsides on Friday as the death toll hit 537. They told of entire neighborhoods in a resort city destroyed and pleaded for food and water to reach those still isolated by Brazil’s deadliest natural disaster in four decades.
Under pouring rain, people mourn during the burial of a landslide victim in Teresopolis, Brazil. A new and ominous rain began falling again Friday in mountain towns where mudslides and flooding killed more than 500 people, hindering rescuers’ efforts to reach survivors.
AP photo
Officials said the death toll in four towns north of Rio de Janeiro was still rising and could jump further once rescuers can reach areas cut off by Wednesday’s slides. They refused to even guess how many remain missing. Local reports put it in the hundreds.
Fernando Perfista, a 31-year-old ranch hand, walked with friends for hours through the night, carrying the body of his 12-year-old boy, the only of his four children he had found.
In the Fazenda Alpina area where he lives, Perfista said uncovered bodies still lay on the ground and the injured left to suffer on their own because no relief had yet reached them.
He said he found his son’s body buried in the mud and had to put it in a refrigerator to keep it from dogs while he went out to search without success for his other three children.
Friends helped Perfista haul the boy’s body to town, where they buried him Friday. Like the scores of other survivors standing outside a morgue in Teresopolis, he was dazed with the shock of sudden loss.
Scientists are convinced the world is beginning to experience once-in-a-century and once-in-five-century climate events.
Extreme weather systems are the first signs of climate instability.
Research has shown that 9 out of the last 10 years have been the warmest in recorded history.
On January 13, ABC News International published a straight forward and comprehensive report that global warming is the root cause of deadly floods being experienced by Australia, Brazil, India, and Hawaii.
In addition, the program was highlighted on the Diane Sawyer program Thursday night.
“This is no longer something that’s theory or conjecture or something that comes out of computer models,” said Dr. Richard Somerville, a coordinating lead author on the IPCC’s 2007 review of climate science. “We’re observing the climate changing. It’s real. It’s happening. It’s scientific fact.”
During the summer of 2010, unusually destructive weather hit on a global scale, with Russia having historic heat waves and wildfires; Pakistan experiencing floods from its three major rivers, which covered one fifth of the country in water and killed over 2000 of people. And Greenland had a major glacier break off, which drifted out to sea.
According to CNN, Queensland, Australia brought in the 2011 New Year with monster flash-floods that killed 9 people and left 200,000 evacuated residents homeless. The flooded area was reported to be larger than France and Germany together.
Torrential rains hit Brazil spawning such fierce flooding that one woman described it as a tsunami from the mountains. Mudslides and car-sized boulders catapulted down on surrounding homes, killing whole families in their sleep. The last official count reported 514 people had been killed and many more remained missing. Make shift morgues were set up in schools and libraries.
Flooding in Sri Lanka has killed 23 people and left millions evacuated or homeless. Raging waters caused an elephant to become lodged in a tree. The flood swamped sewer systems and spilled contamination into the raging waters, creating a dangerous situation that could result in the spread of disease; much like the cholera outbreak in storm-ravaged Haiti.
Maui, Hawaii, has been deluged with rain that caused mudslides, power outages, and road closures, but no casualties.
"A warmer climate speeds up the global water cycle, increasing water levels in the atmosphere," said Dr. Somerville. "It comes down as rain during warmer temperatures and falls as heavy snow when temperatures drop to freezing."
The concern of instability in the global climate system is happening now, not 20-50 years from now. As a result, scientists are no longer hesitant to say with confidence that climate change, driven by global warming--is real and caused by human activity.
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