Heavy rains in Brazil leave at least 56 dead and almost 60 missing


More than 100 people are missing or dead in Brazilreported the government on Sunday, while landslides and floods caused by heavy rains devastated several urban neighborhoods in the northeast of the country.

This is the fourth major flood in five months, highlighting the lack of urban planning in low-income neighborhoods in much of Brazilwhere favelas are often built on slopes prone to collapse.

At least 56 people had died as of Sunday afternoon in the metropolitan region of Recife, capital of Pernambuco and one more in the neighboring state of Alagoas, according to the Federal Civil Defense service, in charge of emergency management. Another 56 people in Pernambuco were missing.

Between those two states, more than 6,000 people had reached government-designated aid points and more than 7,000 were staying with friends or relatives, the Federal Civil Defense service said.

The rain, which gave a truce this Sunday morning, fell again in the afternoon, while hundreds of firefighters and other emergency and assistance bodies worked against the clock, with the help of helicopters and boats, in search of disappeared and the rescue of people who were isolated.

The fury of the storm caused landslides on hills, overflowing rivers and large torrents of mud that devastated everything in its path in several municipalities. Aerial images show some points of the capital of Pernambuco and neighboring municipalities completely flooded.

“I’m under the ground”

The deadliest event took place on Saturday in the community Garden Monteverdea getaway area with precarious houses on the border between Recife and the municipality of Jaboatao dos Guararapes, where a landslide buried entire houses and caused the death of 19 people.

Since Saturday afternoon, Flávio José da Silva has been looking for his stepfather Gilvan in the rubble of what used to be his house. Shortly after the closure collapsed, she managed to talk to him. “He told us” I am here under the ground “. We hope to find him alive,” he told AFP, pointing to the mountain of debris mixed with mud.

In Garden Monteverdethe rescuers, helped by volunteers, removed rubble amid great destruction and the pain of the neighbors.

Eleven of those killed in that landslide were relatives of Luiz Estevao Aguiar, he himself told TV Globo through tears.

“My sister died, my brother-in-law, 11 people in my family died, it was difficult. It was very difficult. I did not expect this,” said this older man, who lives in another municipality.

Behind him, a human chain, with their feet sunk in the mud, was passing buckets of waste coming down from the hill.

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The authorities warned on Saturday that the forecast was for a lot of rain for Sunday.

Between Friday night and Saturday morning, the volume of rains reached 70% of what was expected for the entire month of May in some parts of the capital of Pernambuco.

“Although it has stopped raining now, we are forecasting heavy rains for the next few days. So the first thing is to maintain self-protection measures,” said the minister, who flew over the affected area accompanied by the heads of the Health and Tourism portfolios. and Citizenship.

The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, reported this Sunday morning that on Monday he will travel to Recife to closely follow the “tragedy.”

Meteorologist Estael Sias, from the MetSul agency, explained to AFP that the heavy rains affecting Pernambuco and, to a lesser extent, to four other states in the northeast of the country, are the product of a phenomenon typical of this time, the so-called “eastern waves”, areas of “atmospheric disturbance” that move from the African continent to that coastal region Brazilian.

“In other areas of the Atlantic this instability forms hurricanes, but in northeastern Brazil it has the potential for a lot of rain and even thunderstorms,” ​​he explained.

The images of this weekend evoke the drama that occurred in February in Petrópolis, in the state of Rio de Janeiro (southeast), where 233 people died due to torrential rains and landslides.

According to experts, tragedies like these occur, in addition to heavy rains, due to other factors, such as the type of topography and the existence of large neighborhoods of precarious houses, many of them built illegally, in the steep areas of risk .

In late December and early January, dozens of people were killed and tens of thousands displaced by rains that hit the northeastern state of Bahia.

At the end of January, at least 18 people were killed by floods in the state of Sao Paulo, in the southeast of the country. In February, torrential rains in the state of Rio de Janeiro caused more than 230 deaths.

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