Brazil Mudslides Kill 471, Leave 4,600 Homeless Amid Most Rain in 44 Years
Brazil Mudslides Kill 471 People
Vanderlei Almeida/AFP/Getty Images
Rescue workers search for victims after heavy rains caused mudslides in a low-income neighbourhood in Teresopolis, some 100 km from downtown Rio de Janeiro.
Rescue workers search for victims after heavy rains caused mudslides in a low-income neighbourhood in Teresopolis, some 100 km from downtown Rio de Janeiro. Photographer: Vanderlei Almeida/AFP/Getty Images
Jan. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Brazilian firefighters and police stepped up rescue efforts after the heaviest rainfall in 44 years caused mudslides and floods that swept away houses, killed at least 379 people and left 4,600 homeless in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo states. Bloomberg's Carlos Caminada reports. (Source: Bloomberg)
Entire villages outside Rio de Janeiro were flooded and hillside neighborhoods crushed as Brazil’s heaviest rainfall in 44 years triggered mudslides that killed at least 471 people and left 4,600 homeless.
Damage from the rains was concentrated in the mountainous villages of Petropolis and Teresopolis, about 40 miles north of Rio. At least 448 people died and 2,700 lost houses in the area. In Sao Paulo state, floods killed 23 people and left another 1,900 homeless, the state’s civil defense department said.
President Dilma Rousseff spoke in public for the first time since taking office Jan. 1 after surveying the ongoing rescue effort in Rio de Janeiro. She said decades of poor government planning that allowed poor people to build ramshackle homes in unsafe canyons and mountainsides was to blame for the tragedy.
“We saw regions where mountains fell apart,” Rousseff told reporters yesterday. “Housing in high-risk areas is the rule, not the exception” in Brazil.
Yields on interest-rate futures rose for the third consecutive day in part because of speculation that damage to fruit and vegetable production in the region may stoke inflation. The yield on the contract due in January 2012 gained 3 basis points to 12.32 percent at 8:05 a.m. New York time. Rousseff authorized 700 million reais ($418 million) in aid to fund relief and rescue efforts.
“It was an ominous combination of irregular housing, in many cases, and nature’s fury,” Rio state Governor Sergio Cabral said in a radio interview to CBN yesterday.
Federal Aid
Rousseff said the federal government was assisting in the rescue effort and was working to expand prevention efforts in Minas Gerais, Espirito Santo and other states that may be affected by heavy rainfall.
Victims will be allowed to withdraw money from their government-run severance and disability accounts, known as FGTS, to rebuild their homes or relocate, Labor Minister Carlos Lupi said in Brasilia.
Rio’s state government will help as many as 6,000 families that lost houses pay rent, will set up two field hospitals in the area and is sending 7.3 metric tons of medication and other materials to assist victims, Cabral said.
Erick Conolly de Carvalho, an economist at insurance company Icatu Holding SA, lost eight family members including three sons when the house they had rented in an upscale district of Petropolis was engulfed, according to the city’s civil defense agency.
Heavy rainfall will likely continue in the region in the next three days as a cold front hovers above the mountains north of Rio, Celso Oliveira, a meteorologist at Somar Meteorologia said yesterday in a telephone interview from Sao Paulo.
More Rain
“A cold front is stationed right above the mountain region,” Oliveira said. “People have to be prepared, because we should expect heavy rains for the next few days.”
The region has received the biggest amount of rainfall since 1967, according to the government’s Inmet meteorology agency.
Nova Friburgo, a city founded by German immigrants that became a textile industry hub, will need to be entirely rebuilt, Cabral said. At least 201 died in the town, according to the state’s health and civil defense department.
Fruit Production
Deaths in the town of Teresopolis, a fruit producing region, reached 185, while 43 people died in Petropolis, a town named after Brazilian monarch Pedro II, who built his summer palace there in 1845.
About 15,000 homes were without electricity in the region, following an outage yesterday that affected 105,000 clients, according to Ampla Energia e Servicos SA. Railroad operator All America Latina Logistica said it’s diverting trains to Bauru due to flooding between Pederneiras and Triagem in Sao Paulo state.
Jorge Mario Sedlacek, the mayor of Teresopolis, said at least 2,500 families in the region will have to relocate to other homes as their houses are at risk. Hundreds of people are missing, and rescue workers haven’t been able to reach several communities in the area because roads are blocked, Sedlacek said on GloboNews TV.
To contact the reporter on this story: Adriana Brasileiro in Rio de Janeiro at abrasileiro@bloomberg.net; Adriana Chiarini in Rio de Janeiro at achiarini4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Carlos Caminada at ccaminada1@bloomberg.net
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