The death toll from torrential rains in northeastern Brazil has risen to more than 100, with crews rescuing 106 people missing from floods and landslides on the outskirts of the city of Hasifi on Tuesday, with at least eight others missing.
The governor of the state of Pernabuco, of which Hessefi is the capital, spoke yesterday morning about a hundred dead. However, in a new announcement in the afternoon, he announced that six more people were found dead in the areas that were hit hardest.
More than 400 members of the fire brigade are involved in the operations to locate the missing.
“Investigations” will continue uninterrupted until all those missing are found, “said Uberto Freire, a Civil Protection official in Pernabuco.
In Jardim Monteverde, one of the communities swept away by a landslide between Hasifi and Zambatau do Guararapes, the search ended as the bodies of the last three missing people were recovered.
More than 6,000 people in the Hessefi district have lost their homes and are being housed in shelters, according to the authorities’ latest report.
A state of emergency has been declared in 24 municipalities in Pernabuco.
Brazilian President Zaich Bolsonaro inspected the flooded areas from the air on Monday and his government announced that it was releasing appropriations of about 198 million euros to provide assistance to the affected citizens.
The far-right head of state has been criticized recently for saying that such disasters are “happening”, especially after the tragedy in Petropolis, a few thousand kilometers from Rio de Janeiro (southeast), in February.
Deadly floods hit the state of Bahia (northeast) late last year, then southeast in January, especially in the states of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais.
Within a few hours, on the night of Friday to Saturday, an amount of water equal to 70% of the precipitation that usually is recorded throughout May fell in Pernabuco.
Jose Marengou, a scientist specializing in natural disasters, told AFP that the extremely heavy rainfall was due to global warming, but that what made them more deadly was arbitrary construction.
“Rain does not kill on its own. “What kills is the rain in areas where houses have been built in high-risk areas,” said the research coordinator of the Brazilian National Center for Natural Disaster Monitoring and Warning (CEMADEN).
According to Mr. Marengou, the authorities have responsibilities, they are “guilty” because “they allowed the construction in high risk areas, where poor people live because they have nowhere else to go”.
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