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Slum built on landfill was hit hardest by dozens of mudslides around Rio
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Rio de Janeiro flooding The Brazilian city suffers torrential rain, causing extensive landslides and flooding. |
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NITEROI, Brazil - The death toll from landslides and floods in and around Rio de Janeiro this week reached 224 on Sunday as crews continued searching through the debris.
Workers have now recovered 30 bodies at the site of a slide that wiped out a slum in Niteroi, next to Rio.
Authorities believe many more are still buried in the mud, and the official tally of the dead is likely to keep going up.
Although the rains have eased, the water-soaked terrain threatens further slides.
The latest figures on the confirmed dead were announced in a statement by the Rio de Janeiro fire department.
Most of the victims were swept away in landslides that roared through slums built on steep, unstable hillsides.
Emergency crews used excavating equipment to search for victims at the most devastated site: a slum built atop a garbage dump that was buried by a landslide.
Authorities fear the death toll from that slide alone could be as many as 200, though it was not clear exactly how many people were buried beneath the mud.
The death toll surpasses that of flooding and mudslides in the southern state of Santa Catarina in 2008, which killed nearly 130 people and displaced about 80,000.
'Instant death'
"In our experience, it's an instant death," Pedro Machado, undersecretary of Rio state's Civil Defense department, said of the victims buried by landslides.
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Clesio Araujo, 39, said he narrowly escaped the slide, leaving a pizza parlor just a few minutes before the earth gave way. He said a family was still inside.
The destruction was compounded because the slum is largely built atop an old garbage dump, making it especially unstable and vulnerable to the heavy rains, said Agostinho Guerreiro, president of Rio's main association of engineers and architects.
"It is very fragile soil. It couldn't hold. The houses came down, destroying the ones below them," Guerreiro told Globo TV. "It was a tragedy foretold."
The federal government announced an emergency fund of $114 million to help Rio state, where the slum is located, to deal with the mudslides and flooding.
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But the money will be of little help to people who have no choice but to live in such precarious sections of the city, said Rosana Fernandes, 43, whose sister, brother-in-law and two young nieces were buried under the mud.
Holding a faded photo of the smiling family, she didn't bother holding back the tears as she explained what it is that leads families to live atop a landfill formed by decades of accumulated garbage.
"Yes, it was a dump. But people are desperate to have a home anywhere," she said. "What else were they going to do? Where else were they supposed to go? This is our reality. They knew the risks, but when you have no money, you have no choice," she said.
Rio officials said they are going to step up forced evictions of slum residents living in at-risk areas. Mayor Eduardo Paes announced that 1,500 families are going to be removed from their homes in at least two Rio slums, and that more evictions are likely.
14,000 flee
Officials from Rio state's Civil Defense department said that at least 14,000 people were forced from their homes by the mudslides and that potential slides threatened at least 10,000 other houses in the city.
On Thursday, scores of rescue workers poked at the massive mountain of earth that slid down the hills of the Morro Bumba slum toward a paved road in Niteroi, Rio's sister city of 500,000 people across the Guanabara Bay.
Mounds of soil and garbage rose 40 feet high. A dozen dump trucks were lined up to carry off the debris. Hundreds of onlookers watched as firefighters carried at least four coffins out of the crater created by the slide.
Homeless residents sought shelter in two Evangelical churches just down the road from the slum, where water, food and clothing were handed out. Small children played and slept on dozens of mattresses laid out on church floors.
Niteroi recovery operations were moving slowly: The wet, steep terrain posed a continued threat to anyone trapped in the wreckage and to emergency crews as well, said lead firefighter Alves Souza.
"The work is very intense, given the fact that the volume of material we have here is very large," Souza said.
While it rained only lightly Thursday, the forecast was for heavier rains later in the day and throughout the weekend.
Failed rescue
Firemen struggled for hours to rescue an 8-year-old boy who had called for help from the rubble of a collapsed house in one hillside slum, only to find that the child had died by the time they could reach him.
"I promised his father I would get the boy out alive but I couldn't," tearful fireman Luis Carlos dos Santos said.
Some criminals took advantage of the traffic jams to rob stranded motorists, police reported.
Julia Freitas, a 25-year-old university student, told O Globo newspaper she was approached in her car by a group of men offering help.
"When I rolled down my window, one put a shard of glass to my neck and took my watch, cell phone and purse," Freitas said.
Olympics concerns
The chaos renewed attention on Rio's poor infrastructure as it prepares to host the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016.
The International Olympic Committee said in a statement it planned to have discussions with Rio officials once the situation returns to normal about how the disaster might affect preparations for the games.
"We remain confident that Rio will stage top-quality Games in 2016," the statement said.
In January, at least 76 people died in flooding and mudslides in Brazil's most populous states of Rio, Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais. Then, dozens of people were killed in a landslide at a beach resort between Rio and the port city of Santos.
